LITERARY   MEMOIRS  OF 

THE  NINETEENTH 

CENTURY 


BY 

GEORGE  EDWARD  WOODBERRY 


NEW  YORK 

HARCOURT,  BRACE  AND  COMPANY 
1921 


COPYRIGHT,    TQ2T,   BY 
HARCOURT,  BRACE  AND  COMPANY,  INC. 


NOTE 

I  recall  old  Professor  Child  urging  on  me  in  my  col- 
lege days  "writing  for  bread,"  and  saying  I  should 
remember  "not  all  is  for  immortality,  —  in  literature 
there  are  things  that  are  meant  to  die,  just  as  there 
are  beasts  and  birds  in  nature,"  —  words  that  often  re- 
curred to  me  while  compiling  this  volume.  It  is  a 
selection  from  a  mass  of  contributions  to  the  old  Nation 
and  the  old  Atlantic  of  my  early  years,  like  my  first  book 
of  criticism  (1890);  and,  to  quote  the  preface  of 
that  volume  (what  is  also  true  of  the  other  reprints  of 
this  edition),  the  papers  are  given  with  "little  more  re- 
vision than  was  necessary  to  cover  unimportant  omissions, 
or  to  combine,  in  one  or  two  instances,  kindred  articles." 
These  papers,  however,  though  "very  young"  in  one 
sense,  and  "very  old"  in  another,  fairly  illustrate  the 
working  of  what  is  coming  to  be  called  the  "old,  literary 
education"  in  the  life  of  a  young  writer  in  my  day;  and, 
besides,  I  hope  they  may  be  welcome  to  the  lighter,  but 
still  serious-minded  hours  of  students  in  colleges,  and  to 
teachers  of  literature,  as  a  view  of  literary  affairs  in  the 
nineteenth  century,  though  desultory,  yet  not  often  to 
be  found  in  such  variety  and  compactness,  nor  easily  to 
be  come  at.  And  I  am  satisfied  that  my  old  editors, 
Wendell  Phillips  Garrison  and  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich  — 
and  kinder  and  more  loyal  editors  no  young  writer  ever 
had  —  would  be  pleased  at  this  late  gleaning  from  the 
long-abandoned  spring  wheat-field. 

G.  E.  W. 

BEVERLY,  October  8,  1920. 

446592 


CONTENTS 

Remarks  on  Shelley,  3 

-Sir  George  Beaumont,  Coleridge,  and  Wordsworth,  31 
Thomas  Poole  and  his  Friends,  45 
The  De  Quincey  Family,  57 
Edward  Bulwer,  Lord  Lytton,  67 
The  Correspondence  of  Sir  Henry  Taylor,  75 
Hay  ward's  Correspondence,  91 
Thackeray's  Letters,  101 
Darwin's  Life,  107 
DobelPs  Life  and  Letters,  121 
William  Barnes,  the  Dorsetshire  Poet,  127 
Mr.  Ruskin's  Early  Years,  135 
Carlyle  and  his  Friends,  145 
Edward  Fitzgerald,  189 
Hawthorne,  201 
Longfellow,  215 
Motley's  Correspondence,  227 
Bayard  Taylor,  239 
A  Shakespearean  Scholar,  249 
Colonial  Books,  263 
Charles  Brockden  Brown,  275 
Lucy  Larcom,  283 
On  the  Death  of  Holmes,  297 
Lowell's  Addresses,  303 


LITERARY  MEMOIRS 

OF    THE 

NINETEENTH   CENTURY 


REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY 

I.    HIS     CAREER 

THE  natural  charm  by  which  Shelley  fascinated  his 
familiar  friends  lives  after  him,  and  has  gathered  about 
him  for  his  defense  a  group  of  men  whose  affection  for 
him  seems  no  whit  lessened  because  they  never  knew 
him  face  to  face.  The  one  common  characteristic  promi- 
nent in  all  who  have  written  of  him  with  sympathy,  how- 
ever meager  or  valuable  their  individual  contributions 
of  praise,  criticism,  or  information,  is  this  sentiment  of 
direct,  intimate,  intense  personal  loyalty  which  he  has 
inspired  in  them  to  a  degree  rare,  if  not  unparalleled,  in 
literary  annals.  Under  the  impulse  of  this  strong  love, 
they  have  championed  his  cause,  until  his  fame,  over- 
shadowed in  his  own  generation  by  the  vigorous  worldli- 
ness  of  Byron,  and  slightly  esteemed  by  nearly  all  of  his 
craft,  has  grown  world-wide.  With  the  enthusiasts, 
however,  who  have  aided  in  bringing  about  this  result, 
admiration  for  Shelley's  work  is  a  secondary  thing;  its 
virtue  is  blended  with  and  transfused  into  the  nature  of 
Shelley  himself,  who  is  the  center  of  their  worship.  To 
reveal  the  fineness  and  luster  of  his  character,  his  essen- 
tial worth  throughout  that  romantic  and  darkened  career 
of  thirty  years,  is  their  chief  pleasure,  and  in  this,  too, 
they  have  now  won  some  success,  and  have  partially  re- 
versed the  popular  estimate  of  the  poet  as  merely  an 
immoral  atheist;  yet,  although  some  amends  have  been 


4  LITERARY  MEMOIRS 

made  for  l-arsh  contemporary  criticism,  Shelley's  name 
is  still  for  orthodoxy  a  shibboleth  of  pious  terror  and 
of  insult  to  God.  It  is  still  too  early  to  decide  whether 
the  modification  of  the  harsh  criticism  once  almost  uni- 
versally bestowed  upon  Shelley  will  go  on  permanently, 
or  whether  it  is  not  in  some  measure  due  to  peculiar 
results  of  culture  in  our  own  time.  Without  attempting 
to  prejudice  this  question,  especially  in  regard  to  poetic 
fame,  there  seems  to  be,  as  the  cause  passes  out  of  the 
hands  of  those  who  knew  Shelley  personally  into  the  guar- 
dianship of  the  new  generation,  a  tendency  toward  greater 
unity  of  judgment  in  regard  to  the  larger  phases  of  his 
character  and  conduct. 

Shelley,  as  Swinburne  said  of  William  Blake,  was 
born  into  the  church  of  rebels;  he  was  born,  also,  gentle, 
loving,  and  fearless.  The  dangers  to  which  such  a  natu- 
ral endowment  would  inevitably  expose  him  were  aggra- 
vated by  a  misguided  education,  and  by  the  temper  of 
that  feverish  and  ill-regulated  age  in  which  modern  re- 
form began.  He  was  in  early  years  first  of  all  a  revolter; 
he  would  do  only  what  seemed  to  him  best,  and  in  the 
way  which  seemed  to  him  best;  he  took  nothing  upon 
authority,  he  acknowledged  no  validity  in  the  customs 
and  beliefs  which  past  experience  had  bequeathed  to  men; 
he  must  examine  every  conclusion  anew,  and  accept  or 
reject  it  by  the  light  of  his  own  limited  thought  and 
observation;  he  carried  the  Protestant  spirit  to  its  ulti- 
mate extreme  —  all  legal  and  intellectual  results  em- 
bodied in  institutions  or  in  accepted  beliefs  must  show 
cause  to  him  why  they  should  exist.  He  was,  moreover, 
in  haste;  he  could  not  rest  in  a  doubt,  he  could  not  sus- 
pend his  judgment,  he  could  not  wait  for  fuller  knowledge. 
Finding  only  incomplete  or  incompetent  answers  to  his 


REMARKS   ON    SHELLEY  5 

questioning,  he  leaped  to  the  conclusion  that  there  was 
no  answer.  Had  he  been  contented  with  allowing 
this  spirit  to  influence  only  his  private  creed  and  con- 
duct, mischief  enough  was  sure  to  be  wrought  for  him, 
error  and  suffering  were  in  store  for  him  in  no  common 
degree.  But  he  was  not  merely  building  an  ideal  of  life 
and  formulating  a  rule  of  living  for  himself;  he  had, 
as  he  afterward  confessed,  a  passion  for  reforming  the 
world.  He  was  early  in  print,  and  aspired  to  teach  the 
world  before  he  was  well  out  of  his  teens  —  took  in  his 
hands,  indeed,  the  regeneration  of  Ireland  through  pam- 
phlets, and  public  eloquence,  and  personal  agitation  and 
supervision.  It  is  easy  to  dismiss  this  as  the  foolish  con- 
ceit of  a  boy  of  talent  much  given  to  dreaming.  It 
is  easy,  too,  to  dismiss  his  exile  from  his  home  and  his 
expulsion  from  Oxford  as  childish  obstinacy,  disobedience, 
ingratitude,  and  presumption;  but  if  there  was  anything 
of  these  faults  in  him  there  was  also  much  more  made 
evident  in  these  first  trials  of  his  character:  there  was  the 
capacity  for  sacrifice,  the  resolution  to  be  faithful  to  the 
truth  as  he  saw  it.  The  beginning  of  manhood  found 
him  in  the  full  sway  of  immature  conviction,  and  already 
suffering  the  penalty.  It  is  not  necessary  to  follow  out 
in  detail  the  development  of  a  life  so  entered  upon. 
It  led  him  to  attack  Christianity  and  to  disregard  the  law 
of  marriage,  and  this  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  his 
offense.  Yet  no  sign,  perhaps,  is  so  indicative  of  the 
increased  liberality  of  religion  in  our  time  as  the  attempt 
which  has  been  made  to  show  that  Shelley  was  essentially 
Christian,  an  attempt  so  common  and  vigorous  that  Tre- 
lawney  felt  called  upon  to  protest  against  it.  In  this 
spirit  Mr.  Symonds  writes  from  one  extreme:  "It  is  cer- 
tain that  as  Christianity  passes  beyond  its  medieval  phase, 


6  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

and  casts  aside  the  husk  of  outworn  dogmas,  it  will  more 
and  more  approximate  to  Shelley's  exposition.  Here,  and 
here  only,  is  a  vital  faith  adapted  to  the  conditions  of 
modern  thought,  indestructible  because  essential,  and 
fitted  to  unite  instead  of  separating  minds  of  divers 
quality";  and  Rev.  F.  W.  Robertson,  from  the  other 
extreme  writes:  "I  cannot  help  feeling  that  there  was  a 
spirit  in  poor  Shelley's  mind  which  might  have  assimi- 
lated with  the  spirit  of  his  Redeemer  —  nay,  which  I  will 
dare  to  say  was  kindred  with  that  spirit,  if  only  his  Re- 
deemer had  been  differently  imaged  to  him.  ...  I  will 
not  say  that  a  man  who  by  his  opposition  to  God  means 
opposition  to  a  demon,  to  whom  the  name  of  God  in  his 
mind  is  appended,  is  an  enemy  of  God;  .  .  .  change  the 
name  and  I  will  bid  that  character  defiance  with  you!" 
A  candid  examination  must  show,  however,  that  Tre- 
lawney  is  right;  there  is  no  doubt  that  Shelley  rejected 
altogether  what  is  properly  known  as  Christianity,  in 
youth  violently  and  with  hatred,  while  in  later  years 
he  came  to  care  less  about  it.  At  the  same  time  it 
is  to  be  remembered  that  he  had  seen  Christianity  only 
in  those  forms  whose  most  prominent  characteristic  is 
defect  in  charity  and  love,  which  Shelley  believed  to  be 
the  central  virtues.  Probably  he  never  dissociated  the 
Christian  God  from  the  Jewish  Jehovah,  and  his  feeling 
towards  him  is  well  illustrated  in  the  terrible  indictment 
he  makes  against  him  in  reference  to  Milton's  delineation 
of  Satan  as  one  "who,  in  the  cold  security  of  undoubted 
triumph,  inflicts  upon  his  fallen  enemy  the  most  horrible 
punishment,  not  from  any  mistaken  hope  of  thereby  re- 
forming him,  but  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  exasperat- 
ing him  to  deserve  new  torments."  It  is,  therefore, 
impossible  to  deny  Shelley's  atheism;  the  most  that  can 


REMARKS   ON   SHELLEY  7 

be  contended  for  is  that  in  natural  piety,  in  purity  of 
life  and  motive,  in  conscientious  and  unselfish  action, 
Shelley  was  exceptionally  conspicuous. 

It  is  here  that  the  second  charge  against  Shelley  has 
its  place.  How,  it  is  indignantly  asked,  was  he  unselfish, 
loving,  and  conscientious,  when  he  left  his  youthful  wife 
to  circumstances  which  resulted  in  her  suicide,  and  trans- 
ferred his  devotion  to  another?  Nothing  more  can  be 
done  than  to  point  out  the  fact  that  Shelley  acted  in 
harmony  with  his  convictions  of  social  duty;  that  the 
first  marriage  was  the  result  of  knight-errantry  rather 
than  affection,  and  had  become  destitute  of  any  pleasure; 
that  Shelley  did  not  desert  his  wife  in  such  a  way  as  to 
make  her  suicide  chargeable  to  him.  These  considera- 
tions do  not,  it  is  true,  relieve  him  of  condemnation,  or 
remove  the  really  great  defect  in  his  moral  perception 
of  the  responsibility  which  rested  upon  him  in  conse- 
quence of  a  thoughtless  and  foolish  marriage.  Yet  it 
is  not  doubtful  that  in  his  life  he  atoned  for  his  error,  if 
suffering  is  atonement;  from  that  time  a  shadow  fell 
upon  him  which  never  was  removed.  It  is  hard  to  find 
heart  for  reproach  when  one,  whose  whole  gospel  was  love, 
is  so  cruelly  entangled  in  the  unforeseen  consequences 
of  his  acts  that  he  seems  to  have  wrought  the  work  of 
hatred. 

What,  then,  under  this  presentation  of  the  case,  re- 
mains to  be  said  for  that  ideal  character  which  those  who 
love  Shelley  believe  to  have  been  his  possession?  That, 
beginning  life  with  a  theory  which  left  every  desire  and 
impulse  free  course,  which  imposed  no  restrictions  except 
those  of  his  own  honor  and  self-respect,  which  acknowl- 
edged no  command  not  proceeding  from  his  own  reason, 
he  yet  served  the  truth  he  saw  with  entire  loyalty  and 


8  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

sincerity  of  heart;  that,  making  many  errors  throughout 
a  darkened  life,  he  did  not  strive  by  lightness  of  heart 
or  logical  sophistication  to  avoid  their  penalties  of  misery 
and  remorse,  but  kept  them  in  memory  and  bore  his 
burden  of  sorrow  courageously;  that  by  intense  thought 
and  bitter  experience  he  came  at  last  to  find  the  laws 
of  life  and  to  obey  them.  He  found  how  impossible  it 
is  for  the  individual  to  solve  the  problems  put  before 
him,  so  that  he  himself  grew  content  to  leave  many  of 
these  in  doubt;  found  how  ignorant  it  was  in  him  to 
make  his  own  experience  the  measure  of  the  conditions 
of  general  human  life,  and  attempt  to  reform  the  world's 
motives  and  standards  by  reference  to  that  experience 
alone;  found  how  little  the  individual  counts  for  in  life, 
so  that  the  youth,  who  with  fervid  hope  took  up  the 
regeneration  of  a  whole  nation  in  confidence,  came  to 
doubt  whether  it  was  worth  while  for  him  to  write  at  all, 
and  rated  himself  far  below  his  friend  Byron.  These  char- 
acteristics are  the  evidence  of  his  strength,  sincerity,  and 
Tightness  of  purpose;  and  through  these  he  worked  out 
an  ideal  of  life  and  rule  of  living,  which  differed  much 
from  those  of  his  early  days.  No  ideal  intrinsically  more 
powerful  in  influence  or  more  exalted  in  virtue  has  been 
worked  out  by  men  who,  like  himself,  found  the  old 
familiar  standards  rationally  inadequate  and  morally 
weak.  These  are  the  essential  elements  in  Shelley's 
career,  and  to  them  his  personal  qualities  and  his  daily 
life  give  form  and  color.  This,  too,  is  the  work  of  a  man 
framed  for  self-destruction,  against  whom  circumstances 
did  their  worst  throughout.  The  marvel  is,  not  that  his 
life  was  so  broken  in  private  happiness,  and  his  public 
work  so  unequal  in  the  worth  of  its  results,  but,  taking  all 
into  account,  that  he  saved  so  much  of  his  life  and 


REMARKS   ON    SHELLEY  9 

work  through  his  perception  of  the  valuable  objects  of 
living,  and  his  clinging  to  them. 

This,  too,  was  the  result  of  the  imperfect  years  of 
preparation.  He  had  given  him  only  the  traditional 
thirty  years  which  belong  to  every  genius  for  trial  and 
training  before  the  finished  work  can  be  required.  He 
had  just  recognized  the  conditions  to  which  he  must 
conform,  and  was  only  ready  to  begin  when  he  died. 


II.     HIS   ACQUAINTANCES. 

It  is  impossible  to  condense  Shelley's  Life  in  a  clear 
way.  One  turns  the  pages,  and  owns  for  the  thousandth 
time  the  fascination  of  Shelley,  from  the  first  glimpse  of 
the  boy,  pressing  his  face  against  the  window-pane  to 
kiss  his  sister,  to  the  hot  July  afternoon  when  he  made  his 
last  embarkation,  and  the  summer  storm  swept  the  gleam- 
ing mountains  from  his  sight;  but  no  art  transmits  the 
spell,  and  the  story,  clasped  between  these  periods,  must 
be  left  in  its  integrity.  Shelley  lived  in  solitude,  and  died 
before  he  was  thirty  years  old;  but  his  career  involved 
such  variety  of  scenes,  persons,  and  incidents,  was  so 
thick-strewn  with  interesting  episodes,  and  contained  so 
many  perplexed  passages,  that  it  is  a  study  by  itself,  and 
requires  for  its  mastery  an  acquaintance  with  an  extensive 
literature  of  its  own.  It  were  useless  to  attempt  a  criti- 
cism, or  to  describe  Shelley  anew,  but  some  unstudied  re- 
marks upon  his  fortunes  in  life  may  be  ventured  upon. 

Must  one  incur  the  charge  of  being  supercilious  and 
aristocratic  if  he  acknowledges  at  once  a  feeling,  after 
reading  Shelley's  life,  of  having  been  in  very  disagreeable 
company?  Assuredly  no  one  can  rise  from  the  perusal 


io  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

with  a  heightened  respect  for  human  nature,  apart  from 
Shelley.  He  was  born  a  gentleman;  his  innate  courtesy 
clothes  him  with  attractiveness,  and  distinguishes  him 
among  his  associates  as  a  person  of  a  different  kind  from 
them,  in  his  actions  and  bearing;  and  the  deference  which 
Byron  showed  to  him,  it  is  not  unlikely,  sprang  from  a 
perception  of  this  strain  of  breeding  in  him  rather  than 
from  appreciation  of  his  genius  or  his  nature.  In  his 
earliest  fellowship  with  school-friends,  for  whom  he  had 
a  kindly  regard  at  Eton  and  after  they  went  down  to- 
gether to  Oxford,  though  Hogg  plainly  obscures  it,  there 
is  a  gleam  here  and  there  of  natural  and  equal  com- 
panionship; but  this  morning  ray  soon  dies  out.  He 
was,  afterwards,  almost  uniformly  unfortunate  in  his 
acquaintances.  His  life  was  truly  one  long  and  sorrow- 
ful disillusion;  and  in  it  not  the  least  part  was  the  dis- 
covery of  how  he  had  been  deceived  in  his  judgment  of 
persons. 

Hogg  was  his  first  example.  Shelley  became  familiar 
with  him  at  Oxford,  and,  not  content  with  having 
him  for  a  bosom  friend,  wished  to  make  him  his 
brother-in-law.  At  that  time  Shelley  was  in  the  first 
crude  ferment  of  his  intellectual  life,  eagerly  absorbing 
the  new  knowledge  which  came  to  him  from  his  indis- 
criminate reading,  and  disputing  on  all  the  usual  topics 
with  vehement  and  unwearied  earnestness,  insatiable  curi- 
osity, and  the  delight  of  a  youth  who  has  just  made  the 
discovery  that  he  has  a  mind  of  his  own.  His  thoughts 
and  letters  were  mostly  polemical;  ideal  elements  of 
morality  were  growing  up  in  him,  and  radical  views  of 
conduct  getting  a  hold  in  his  convictions.  He  was  willful, 
precipitate,  and  heedless  through  inexperience;  he  was 
thrown  the  more  upon  himself,  and  given  a  violent  turn 


REMARKS   ON   SHELLEY  n 

toward  rebellion,  to  which  he  was  prone  enough,  by  his 
expulsion  from  Oxford,  and  the  senseless  attempt  of  his 
family  to  make  him  suppress  his  mental  and  moral  life 
by  denying  his  first  dear  conclusions.  In  this  state,  partly 
from  adventure  and  restlessness,  perhaps,  but  also  from  a 
sense  of  obligation,  the  desire  to  spread  his  gospel,  and 
by  the  mere  favor  of  circumstances,  he  married  his  first 
wife,  though  he  knew  that  his  sympathies  were  more 
engaged  than  his  heart. 

At  Edinburgh,  whither  the  pair  had  gone,  Hogg  joined 
them,  and  with  him  they  returned  to  York,  where  Shel- 
ley left  his  wife  in  his  friend's  care  during  a  brief  neces- 
sary absence.  Hogg,  who  appears  to  have  been  not  so 
pure  as  might  be  wished  in  his  university  days,  tried  to 
seduce  her;  and  when  Shelley  came  back  he  learned  the 
facts.  He  loved  Hogg;  he  was  ashamed,  he  wrote,  to 
tell  him  how  much  he  loved  him;  he  was  grateful  to  him 
for  having  stood  by  him  and  shared  his  expulsion  from  the 
college;  and  he  placed  the  most  extravagant  estimate 
upon  his  abilities.  What  followed  upon  the  disclosure 
Shelley  himself  tells  in  a  letter  written  at  the  time:  - 

"We  walked  to  the  fields  beyond  York.  I  desired  to 
know  fully  the  account  of  this  affair.  I  heard  it  from 
him,  and  I  believe  he  was  sincere.  All  I  can  recollect 
of  that  terrible  day  was  that  I  pardoned  him  —  fully, 
freely  pardoned  him;  that  I  would  still  be  a  friend  to 
him,  and  hoped  soon  to  convince  him  how  lovely  virtue 
was;  that  his  crime,  not  himself,  was  the  object  of  my 
detestation;  that  I  value  a  human  being  not  for  what  it 
has  been,  but  for  what  it  is;  that  I  hoped  the  time  would 
come  when  he  would  regard  his  horrible  error  with  as 
much  disgust  as  I  did.  He  said  little;  he  was  pale, 
terror-struck,  remorseful." 


12  LITERARY  MEMOIRS 

One  may  smile  at  this  episode,  if  he  be  cynical,  and 
has  left  youth  far  enough  behind;  but  for  all  that,  there 
is  something  pathetic  in  these  sentences  of  boyish  good- 
ness, this  simple  belief  in  the  moral  principles  which  Shel- 
ley had  found  in  his  first  search,  and  to  which  he  had 
given  the  allegiance  of  his  unworn  heart;  and  in  this 
scene  of  forgiveness,  still  confused  with  the  emotions  of 
first  friendship  betrayed,  one  perceives  the  Shelley  we 
know,  though  he  was  not  yet  out  of  his  teens.  Some  time 
elapsed  before  Shelley  realized  all  the  incident  meant; 
then  he  wrote,  "I  leave  him  to  his  fate;"  and  when  they 
met  again  in  London,  the  old  footing  was  gone  forever. 

Godwin,  too,  affords  a  capital  example  of  a  shattered 
ideal.  He  was  the  Socrates  of  the  young  poet,  and 
Shelley,  who  derived  the  main  articles  of  his  political  and 
social  creed  from  the  radical  philosopher's  great  book, 
was  already  adoring  him  as  one  in  the  pantheon  of  the 
immortal  dead,  when  he  learned  from  Southey  that  his 
master  and  emancipator  still  walked  the  earth.  He  sat 
down  at  once  and  wrote  a  characteristic  epistle,  in  which 
he  expressed  himself  with  the  enthusiasm  of  a  disciple 
not  yet  twenty,  and  respectfully  but  earnestly  besought 
the  living  friendship  and  advice  of  him  whom  he  re- 
garded as  the  light  of  the  new  age.  Godwin  was  inter- 
ested, and  long  and  frequent  letters,  admirable  in  tone 
upon  both  sides,  passed  between  them.  The  elder  en- 
deavored to  check  the  irrepressible  activity  and  eager 
plans  of  the  young  reformer,  who  had  no  notion  of  waiting 
until  he  should  grow  old  before  setting  to  work  to  remake 
society;  and  the  youth,  on  his  part,  exhibited  a  deference 
and  willingness  to  be  guided  such  as  he  never  showed 
before  or  afterwards.  The  first  modification  of  Shel- 
ley's idea  of  Godwin  came  in  consequence  of  their  per- 


REMARKS   ON    SHELLEY  13 

sonal  acquaintance,  as  was  natural;  but  in  discovering 
that  Godwin  was  really  an  idiosyncratic  mortal,  as  well 
as  an  illuminating  intellect,  Shelley  did  not  yield  his 
admiration  for  the  sage.  One  can  still  see  the  unbounded 
astonishment  of  the  poet,  which  Mary  Godwin  describes, 
when  she  told  him  her  father  was  annoyed  by  his  address- 
ing him  as  aMr."  instead  of  "Esq."  in  directing  his  let- 
ters. They  got  on  very  well  together,  however,  until 
Shelley  ran  away  with  Mary  —  a  practical  exposition  of 
Godwin's  doctrines,  which  he,  having  now  grown  re- 
spectable and  socially  cautious,  did  not  at  all  relish. 
Shelley  had  before  this  aided  Godwin  somewhat  in 
financial  embarrassments.  That  philosopher  was  always 
in  debt;  and  the  young  disciple,  who,  though  the  heir 
to  a  great  property,  had  no  way  of  realizing  from  it 
except  by  selling  post-obit  bonds,  agreed  with  his  master 
that  philosophers  have  a  paramount  claim  on  any  money 
their  friends  might  own.  He  was  willing  to  discharge 
his  duty  by  getting  Godwin  out  of  debt,  or  assisting  him 
as  far  as  he  could  in  the  matter.  When  he  returned  to 
England  with  Mary  he  found  that  the  philosopher  would 
not  see  or  forgive  him,  and  positively  declined  to  corre- 
spond except  upon  the  subject  of  how  much  money  Shel- 
ley could  give  him.  Shelley  had  no  thought  of  not  doing 
his  own  duty,  because  of  the  conduct  of  other  people;  and 
while  he  felt  Godwin's  hardness  and  inconsistency,  never- 
theless he  would  relieve  that  great  mind  from  the  little 
annoyances  consequent  on  borrowing  money  without  pro- 
viding means  of  repayment.  He,  however,  was  not  blind; 
and  what  he  learned  of  Godwin  in  the  course  of  these 
transactions  had  a  destroying  influence  upon  that  ideal 
of  the  man  which  he  had  formed  in  his  first  days  of 
revolutionary  hope.  In  the  second  year  of  his  life  with 


I4  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

Mary  he  told  the  philosopher  what  he  thought  of  the 
whole  matter  in  a  letter  which  one  may  be  excused  for 
reading  with  peculiar  satisfaction:  — 

"It  has  perpetually  appeared  to  me  to  have  been  your 
especial  duty  to  see  that,  so  far  as  mankind  value  your 
good  opinion,  we  were  dealt  justly  by,  and  that  a  young 
family,  innocent  and  benevolent  and  united,  should,  not 
be  confounded  with  prostitutes  and  seducers.  My 
astonishment,  and,  I  will  confess,  when  I  have  been 
treated  with  most  hardness  and  cruelty  by  you,  my  indig- 
nation, has  been  extreme,  that,  knowing  as  you  do  my 
nature,  any  considerations  should  have  prevailed  on  you 
to  have  been  thus  harsh  and  cruel.  I  lamented  also  over 
my  ruined  hopes  of  all  that  your  genius  once  taught  me 
to  expect  from  your  virtue,  when  I  found  that  for  your- 
self, your  family,  and  your  creditors  you  would  submit 
to  that  communication  with  me  which  you  once  rejected 
and  abhorred,  and  which  no  pity  for  my  poverty  or  suffer- 
ings, assumed  willingly  for  you,  could  avail  to  extort.  Do 
not  talk  of  forgiveness  again  to  me,  for  my  blood  boils 
in  my  veins,  and  my  gall  rises  against  all  that  bears  the 
human  form,  when  I  think  of  what  I,  their  benefactor 
and  ardent  lover,  have  endured  of  enmity  and  contempt 
from  you  and  from  all  mankind." 

The  writer  was  that  youth  of  twenty-three  years,  of 
whom  Godwin  remarks  that  he  knew  "that  Shelley's 
temper  was  occasionally  fiery,  resentful,  and  indignant." 
It  is  true  that  it  was  so,  and  one  is  pleased  to  find  upon 
what  fit  occasions  it  broke  out.  Shelley,  however,  had 
undertaken  a  hopeless  and  endless  task  in  trying  to  extri- 
cate Godwin  from  debt,  and  he  spent  much  money,  raised 
at  a  great  sacrifice,  in  the  vain  attempt.  What  he 
thought  of  these  transactions,  when  his  judgment  had 


REMARKS   ON    SHELLEY  15 

matured,  we  know  from  another  delightfully  plain-spoken 
letter,  written  five  years  later,  in  answer  to  renewed  im- 
portunities: — 

"I  have  given  you  the  amount  of  a  considerable  fortune, 
and  have  destituted  myself,  for  the  purpose  of  realizing 
it,  of  nearly  four  times  the  amount.  Except  for  the 
good-will  which  this  transaction  seems  to  have  produced 
between  you  and  me,  this  money,  for  any  advantage  it 
ever  conferred  on  you,  might  as  well  have  been  thrown 
into  the  sea.  Had  I  kept  in  my  own  hands  this  £4,000 
or  £5,000,  and  administered  it  in  trust  for  your  perma- 
nent advantage,  I  should  indeed  have  been  your  bene- 
factor. The  error,  however,  was  greater  in  the  man  of 
mature  age,  extensive  experience,  and  penetrating  intel- 
lect than  in  the  crude  and  impetuous  boy.  Such  an  error 
is  seldom  committed  twice." 

But  long  before  this,  Shelley,  though  his  estimate  of 
Godwin's  powers,  in  common  with  that  of  the  people 
of  the  time,  remained  extravagant,  had  found  out  the 
difference  between  the  author  of  "Political  Justice"  and 
Plato  and  Bacon. 

If  any  one  wonders  at  the  extent  to  which  Shelley  let 
himself  be  fleeced  by  the  philosophical  radical  of  Skinner 
Street,  he  should  reserve  some  astonishment  for  the 
remainder  of  the  shearers.  Shelley,  it  is  to  be  remem- 
bered, was  never  in  possession  of  his  property,  and  had 
only  a  small  allowance  at  first,  and  a  thousand  pounds 
a  year  after  he  was  twenty- four  years  old;  he  was  extrava- 
gant in  his  generosity,  and  gave  money  with  a  free  hand, 
whenever  he  had  any,  to  the  poor  about  him,  to  his  needy 
friends,  and  to  causes  of  one  kind  and  another  which 
excited  in  him  his  passion  for  philanthropy.  He  was, 
consequently,  in  his  early  days,  commonly  in  debt  for  his 


1 6  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

own  expenses,  and  often  in  danger  of  arrest  and  im- 
prisonment. When  he  mentioned  his  days  of  poverty, 
in  that  letter  to  Godwin,  it  was  not  a  mere  phrase;  and 
though  a  settlement  was  at  last  made  which  provided 
for  him  sufficiently,  he  was  never  ahead  in  his  savings. 
Under  these  circumstances,  his  biography  at  times  re- 
minds one  of  the  old  comedy,  with  its  mob  of  parasites 
and  legacy-hunters.  He  was  simply  victimized  by  those 
who  could  establish  any  claim  on  his  benevolence.  No 
doubt  he  gave  willingly,  with  all  his  heart,  to  Peacock 
and  Leigh  Hunt  and  the  rest,  as  he  did  to  Godwin,  and 
thought  it  was  his  duty  as  well  as  his  pleasure;  but  his 
generosity  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  his  acquaintances 
were  very  dull  of  conscience  in  money  matters.  One 
begins  to  relent  a  little  toward  Hogg,  remembering  that 
he  did  actually  share  his  own  funds  with  Shelley  just 
after  the  expulsion  from  Oxford,  when  the  latter  could 
get  no  money,  owing  to  his  father 's  displeasure;  and  for 
Horace  Smith,  the  banker,  who  sometimes  advanced 
money  to  Shelley,  and  not  too  much,  one  has  a  feeling  of 
amazed  respect. 

The  worst  misfortune  of  Shelley,  however,  in  the 
friends  he  made,  was  to  have  met  and  married  Harriet 
Westbrook.  The  circumstances  of  their  union  and  its 
unlucky  course  and  tragical  close  have  lately  been  for 
the  first  time  fully  set  forth.  The  marriage  on  Shelley's 
side  was  not  originally  one  of  love,  but  it  became  one  of 
affection.  For  two  years  life  went  on  without  the  dis- 
covery of  anything  to  break  the  happiness  of  the  pair; 
but  after  the  birth  of  their  first  child  trouble  arose,  and 
rapidly  culminated.  It  is  most  likely  that  the  sister-in- 
law,  Eliza,  who  lived  with  them,  was  the  source  of  the 
original  dissension  by  her  interference,  arbitrariness,  and 


REMARKS   ON    SHELLEY  17 

control  of  Harriet;  but,  as  Shelley  had  grown  in  mind 
and  character,  the  difference  between  him  and  his  wife 
in  endowment  and  in  taste  was  bound  to  make  itself 
felt,  and  to  put  an  end  to  the  unity  of  study  and  spirit 
of  which  he  had  dreamed;  and  it  is  clear  enough  that 
she  had  tired  of  the  studies  and  the  purposes  in  which 
Shelley's  life  consisted,  and  that  though  overborne  for  a 
time,  by  his  influence,  she  was  now  showing  herself 
worldly,  frivolous,  and  weak.  She  had  married  the  heir 
to  a  baronetcy  and  a  fortune,  and  desired  to  profit  by  it. 
In  one  way  and  another  she  had  become  hard  and  un- 
yielding toward  Shelley,  had  made  him  thoroughly 
miserable,  and,  in  the  earlier  months  of  1814,  was  living 
away  from  him;  and  he,  on  his  side,  as  late  as  May  in 
that  year,  as  appears  from  stanzas  now  first  printed,  was 
trying  to  soften  her.  While  affairs  were  in  this  condi- 
tion he  first  met  Mary  Godwin,  and  he  fell  passionately 
in  love  with  her,  all  the  more  because  of  the  long  strain 
of  dejection  and  loneliness;  and  in  addition  to  the  story 
of  the  dissensions  that  had  arisen  in  his  family,  and  the 
difference  of  character  and  temperament  which  had  de- 
clared itself  between  his  wife  and  himself,  Shelley  is  said 
to  have  told  Mary  that  Harriet  had  been  unfaithful  to 
him.  If  he  did  not  tell  her  then,  he  did  afterwards. 
On  what  evidence  he  relied  we  do  not  know;  nor  is  there 
any  confirmatory  proof  from  other  quarters  except  a 
letter  of  Godwin's  written  after  Harriet's  suicide,  in 
which  he  states  the  same  fact  as  coming  from  unquestion- 
able authority  unconnected  with  Shelley.  Not  long  be- 
fore his  death  Shelley  renewed  the  charge,  though  in  a 
veiled  and  inferential  way,  in  a  letter  to  Southey,  in 
which  he  defends  himself  for  his  conduct  in  this  matter, 
declares  his  innocence  of  any  harm  done  or  intended, 


1 8  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

refuses  to  be  held  responsible  for  the  suicide  of  Harriet, 
and  practically  asserts  that  he  had  grounds  for  divorce, 
had  he  chosen  to  free  himself  in  that  way.  There  is 
no  need  to  prove  that  Shelley  was  right  in  his  belief 
of  his  wife's  infidelity;  but  if  it  be  thought  that  Shelley 
did  in  truth  believe  her  guilty,  that  has  much  to  do  with 
our  estimate  of  his  action.  He  was  twenty-two  years 
old,  or  nearly  that,  and  he  held  radical  views  as  to  the 
permanence  and  sacredness  of  the  marriage  bond,  as 
also  did  Mary,  who  inherited  them  from  her  mother. 
Their  decision  to  unite  their  lives,  under  these  circum- 
stances, was  a  practical  admission  that  Shelley's  home 
was  in  fact  broken  up,  and  that  he  was  free  to  offer, 
and  Mary  to  accept,  not  legal  union,  but  a  common  home, 
with  the  expectation  and  purpose  of  complete  devotion 
one  to  the  other,  in  pure  spirit  and  for  the  ordinary  ends 
of  marriage. 

Shelley  did  not  proceed  secretly.  He  summoned  Har- 
riet, who  had  not  thought  of  such  serious  results  of  her 
action,  to  London,  and  told  her  what  he  was  going  to  do. 
She  did  not  consent  to  the  separation,  nor  does  she  seem 
to  have  regarded  it  as  final.  Shelley  had  a  settlement 
made  for  her  by  the  lawyers,  provided  credit  for  her,  and 
two  weeks  after  the  interview  left  England  with  Mary. 
He  wrote  to  Harriet  on  the  journey,  assured  her  of  his 
affection  and  his  care  for  her,  and  indulged  a  plan  that 
she  should  live  near  them,  which  is,  perhaps,  the  most 
surprising  instance  of  Shelley's  purity  of  mind,  and  of 
the  unworldliness  or  unreality,  as  one  chooses  to  call  it, 
of  his  conception  of  how  human  life  might  be  lived.  On 
his  return  he  saw  her,  and  agreed  to  leave  the  children 
with  her ;  and  when  his  allowance  was  fixed  at  a  thousand 
pounds,  he  gave  orders  to  honor  her  drafts  for  two  hun- 


REMARKS   ON   SHELLEY  19 

dred  pounds  annually.  She  had  an  equal  amount  from 
her  own  family,  which  had  been  paid  since  the  beginning 
of  their  married  life.  When  Shelley  left  England  the 
second  time,  she  was  thus  provided  for,  one  would  think, 
sufficiently.  On  his  return  he  lost  sight  of  her,  and  was 
anxiously  inquiring  for  her,  when  the  news  of  her  suicide 
reached  him.  She  had  put  the  children,  of  whom  the 
eldest  was  three  years  old,  out  to  board,  at  a  time  when 
he  was  ill;  she  had  not  been  permitted  to  see  her  father; 
but  the  circumstances  immediately  surrounding  her  death 
are  not  known.  Shelley,  though  he  bore  his  share  of 
natural  sorrow  for  the  death  of  one  to  whom  he  had  been 
tenderly  attached,  did  not  hold  himself  guilty  of  any 
wrong. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  in  the  last  few  years  of  his  life 
Shelley  would  not  talk  of  his  earlier  days,  and  had  a  kind 
of  shame  in  remembering  in  what  ruin  his  hopes  and 
purposes  and  the  enthusiasm  of  his  youth  had  fallen;  he 
felt  it  as  an  indignity  to  the  nobleness  of  spirit  which, 
in  spite  of  all  his  failures,  he  knew  had  been  his  through- 
out. As  we  see  those  years,  it  is  only  for  himself  that 
we  prize  them;  and  it  is  a  pleasure  to  be  enabled  to  look 
on  them  free  from  that  saddening  retrospect  of  his  own 
mind,  and  observe  how  natural  and  simple  he  really  was. 
No  one  has  ever  had  the  days  of  his  youth  so  laid  open 
to  the  common  gaze,  and  this  is  one  charm  of  his  per- 
sonality, that  we  know  him  as  a  brother  or  a  friend.  The 
pages  afford  many  happy  anecdotes;  but  one  can  linger 
here  only  to  mark  the  constant  playfulness  of  Shelley, 
which  was  a  bright  element  in  his  earlier  career  and  not 
altogether  absent  in  his  Italian  life.  The  passion  for 
floating  paper-boats,  which  he  indulged  unweariedly,  is 
well  known;  but  at  all  times  he  was  ready  for  sport,  and 


20  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

could  even  trifle  with  his  dearest  plans,  as  in  the  flotilla 
of  bottles  and  aerial  navy  of  fire-balloons,  all  loaded  with 
revolutionary  pamphlets,  which  he  sent  forth  on  the 
Devonshire  coast.  His  running  about  the  little  garden, 
hand  in  hand  with  Harriet;  his  impersonating  fabulous 
monsters  with  Leigh  Hunt's  children,  who  begged  him 
"not  to  do  the  horn";  and  his  favorite  sport  with  his 
little  temporarily  adopted  Marlow  girl,  of  placing  her  on 
the  dining-table,  and  rushing  with  it  across  the  long 
room,  are  instances  that  readily  recur  to  mind,  and  illus- 
trate the  gaiety  and  high  spirits  which  really  belonged 
to  him,  and  which  perhaps  the  Serchio  last  knew  when 
it  bore  him  and  his  boat  on  his  summer-day  voyages. 
This  side  of  his  nature  ought  to  be  remembered,  as  well 
as  that  "occasionally  fiery,  resentful,  and  indignant" 
quality  which  Godwin  observed,  and  the  intense  and 
restless  practicality  of  the  impatient  reformer,  when  one 
thinks  of  Shelley  (as  he  has  been  too  often  represented) 
as  only  a  morbid,  sensitive,  idealizing  poet,  of  a  rather 
feminine  spirit.  That  portrait  of  him  is  untruthful,  for 
he  was  of  a  most  masculine,  active,  and  naturally  joyful 
nature. 

After  he  left  England  for  the  last  time,  and  took  up  his 
abode  in  Italy,  principally,  it  would  seem,  because  of  the 
social  reproach  and  public  stigma  under  which  he  lived, 
and  by  which  he  felt  deeply  wronged,  he  was  not  really 
much  more  fortunate  in  his  company.  The  immediate 
reason  for  the  journey  was  to  take  Byron's  natural  daugh- 
ter, Allegra,  to  her  father  at  Venice;  the  mother,  Miss 
Clairmont,  went  with  them,  and,  as  it  turned  out,  con- 
tinued to  be  a  member  of  Shelley's  family,  as  she  had 
been  since  his  union  with  Mary.  It  is  now  known  that 
the  Shelleys  were  ignorant  of  the  liaison.,  both  when  it 


REMARKS   ON    SHELLEY  21 

began  in  London,  and  afterward  when  they  first  met 
Byron  at  Geneva;  but  Shelley  had  a  warm  affection  for 
Miss  Clairmont,  whose  friendliness  appealed  to  his  sym- 
pathy, and  he  spent  much  time  in  Italy  in  trying  to  make 
Byron  do  his  duty  toward  Allegra,  and  to  soften  the  ill- 
nature  of  her  parents  toward  each  other.  Byron's  conduct 
in  this  matter  was  a  powerful  element  in  generating  in  Shel- 
ley that  thorough  contempt  he  expressed  for  the  former 
as  a  man.  But  though  Shelley's  most  winning  qualities 
are  to  be  observed,  and  his  tact  was  conspicuously  called 
forth  by  their  negotiations  in  regard  to  the  child,  yet  the 
connection  with  Miss  Clairmont  was  unfortunate.  That 
it  repeatedly  drew  scandal  upon  him  was  a  minor  matter; 
it  was  of  more  consequence  that  in  his  family  she  was 
a  disturbing  element,  and  Mary,  who  had  disliked  to 
have  her  as  an  inmate  almost  from  the  first,  finally 
insisted  on  her  withdrawal,  but  not  until  frequent  dis- 
agreements had  sadly  marred  the  peace  of  Shelley's 
home.  Mary,  indeed,  was  not  perfect,  any  more  than 
other  very  young  wives;  and  by  her  jealousies,  and  yet 
more,  it  seems,  by  her  attempts  to  make  Shelley  con- 
form to  the  world,  especially  in  the  last  year  or  two, 
she  tried  and  harassed  him;  and  so  it  came  about  that 
his  love  took  the  form  of  tenderness  of  her  welfare  and 
feelings,  and  often  of  despondency  for  himself.  Miss 
Clairmont  was  a  source  of  continual  trouble  for  him  in 
many  ways:  she  was  of  an  unhappy  temperament  and 
hard  to  live  with;  but  with  his  long-enduring  and  chari- 
table disposition,  and  his  extraordinary  tenacity  in 
attachment,  and  perfect  readiness  to  admit  the  least 
obligation  upon  him,  proceeding  from  any  one  in  trouble, 
he  never  wavered  in  his  devotion  to  her  interests  and  care 
for  her  happiness.  It  is  a  curious  fact  that  Miss  Clair- 


22  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

mont,  who  lived  to  be  very  old,  manipulated  the  written 
records  of  this  portion  of  her  life,  so  that  her  evidence 
is  of  very  questionable  worth,  though  better,  one  hopes, 
than  that  of  her  mother,  the  second  Mrs.  Godwin,  whose 
lying  about  the  Shelleys  was  of  the  most  wholesale  and 
conscienceless  kind. 

As  with  Miss  Clairmont,  so  in  a  less  degree  with 
others  of  the  Italian  circle.  But  enough  has  been  said  of 
the  character  of  the  people  whom  Shelley  knew.  It  can- 
not be  that  they  cut  so  poor  a  figure  because  of  Shelley's 
presence,  hard  as  the  contrast  of  common  human  nature 
must  be  with  him.  It  is  observable,  and  it  is  in  some 
sort  a  test,  that  he  did  not  overvalue  them.  Hogg,  Pea- 
cock, and  Medwin  were  all  deceived,  if  they  thought 
he  trusted  them  or  held  them  closer  than  mere  friendly 
acquaintances;  there  is  no  evidence  that  he  felt  for 
Williams  or  Trelawney  any  more  than  an  affectionate 
good  will;  toward  Leigh  Hunt  he  had  the  kindest  feel- 
ing of  gratitude  and  of  respect,  and  for  Gisborne  and 
Reveley  a  warm  cordiality,  but  nothing  more.  Mary 
he  loved,  though  with  full  knowledge  of  her  weaknesses, 
in  a  manly  way;  for  Miss  Clairmont  he  had  a  true  affec- 
tion; and  he  recognized  poetically  a  womanly  attractive- 
ness in  Mrs.  Williams,  who  seems  to  have  represented 
to  him  the  spirit  of  restfulness  and  peace,  in  the  last 
months  of  his  life.  But  at  the  end,  his  errors  respecting 
men  and  things  being  swept  away,  his  ideals  removed 
into  the  eternal  world,  and  his  disillusion  complete,  the 
most  abiding  impression  is  of  the  loneliness  in  which 
he  found  himself;  and  remembering  this,  one  forgets 
the  companions  he  had  upon  his  journey,  and  fastens  at- 
tention more  closely  upon  the  man  through  whose  genius 
that  journey  has  become  one  of  undying  memory. 


REMARKS   ON    SHELLEY  23 

There  is  no  thought  of  eulogizing  him  in  saying  that 
he  represents  the  ideal  of  personal  and  social  aspiration, 
of  the  love  of  beauty  and  of  virtue  equally,  and  of  the 
hope  of  eradicating  misery  from  the  world;  hence  springs 
in  large  measure  his  hold  on  young  hearts,  on  those  who 
value  the  spirit  above  all  else  and  do  not  confine  their 
recognition  of  it  within  too  narrow  bounds,  and  on  all 
who  are  believers  in  the  reform  of  the  world  by  human 
agencies.  He  represents  this  ideal  of  aspiration  in  its 
most  impassioned  form;  and  in  his  life  one  reads  the 
saddest  history  of  disillusion.  It  is  because,  in  the 
course  of  this,  he  abated  no  whit  of  his  lifelong  hope, 
did  not  change  his  practice  of  virtue,  and  never  yielded 
his  perfect  faith  in  the  supreme  power  of  love,  both  in 
human  life  and  in  the  universe,  that  his  name  has  be- 
come above  all  price  to  those  over  whom  his  influence 
extends.  It  is,  perhaps,  more  as  a  man  than  as  a  poet 
merely  that  he  is  beloved;  the  shadows  upon  his  reputa- 
tion, as  one  approaches  nearer,  are  burnt  away  in  light; 
and  he  is  the  more  honored,  the  more  he  is  known.  For 
it  would  be  wrong  to  close  even  these  informal  remarks 
without  expressing  dissent  from  the  assumption  that  Shel- 
ley's intellectual  and  moral  life  was  one  long  mistake. 
Disillusion  it  was,  and  the  nature  of  it  has  been  indicated 
by  the  single  point  of  his  acquaintances;  but  a  life  of 
disillusion  and  one  of  mere  mistake  are  not  to  be  con- 
founded together.  Better  fortune  cannot  be  asked  for  a 
youth  than  that  he  should  conceive  life  nobly,  and,  in 
finding  wherein  it  falls  short,  should  yet  not  fall  short 
himself  of  his  ideal  beyond  what  may  be  forgiven  to 
human  frailty.  Shelley's  misconceptions  were  the  con- 
ditions of  his  living  the  ideal  life  at  all,  and  differed  from 
those  of  other  youths  in  face  of  an  untried  world  only 


24  LITERARY  MEMOIRS 

by  their  moral  elevation,  passion,  and  essential  nobleness; 
he  matured  as  other  men  do  by  time  and  growth  and 
experience,  and  he  suffered  much  by  the  peculiar  circum- 
stances of  his  fate;  but  in  the  issue  the  substance  of 
error  in  his  life  was  less  than  it  seems.  Shelley,  at  least, 
never  admitted  he  had  been  wrong  in  the  essential  doc- 
trines of  his  creed  and  the  motives  of  his  acts,  though  he 
had  been  deceived  in  regard  to  human  nature  and  what 
was  possible  to  it  in  society. 

III.     HIS   ITALIAN   LETTERS. 

The  prose  work  of  Shelley  has  remained  in  the  ob- 
scurity which  it  once  shared  with  his  poetry.  The  formal 
essays,  which  concern  the  transitory  affairs  of  the  world 
or  themes  of  thought  remote  through  their  generality, 
are  valued,  even  by  admirers  of  Shelley,  mainly  as  media 
of  his  spirit;  the  familiar  letters,  scattered  in  old  books, 
or  collected  only  in  a  costly  edition,  and  deprived  of 
interest  effectiveness  because  those  of  high  and  enduring 
interest  have  never  been  selected  and  massed  until  re- 
cently, have  escaped  any  wide  public  attention;  even 
the  translations  have  been  neglected.  All  this  really 
large  body  of  prose,  however  exalted  by  its  informing 
enthusiasm,  however  exquisite  in  language,  and  melodious, 
lies  outside  the  open  pathways  of  literature.  It  is  this 
fact  which  gave  the  element  of  surprise  to  what  Mr. 
Arnold  called  his  doubt  "whether  Shelley's  delightful 
"Essays  and  Letters,"  which  deserve  to  be  far  more  read 
than  they  are  now,  will  not  resist  the  wear  and  tear 
of  time  better,  and  finally  come  to  stand  higher,  than  his 
poetry,"  —  a  judgment  which  well  deserved  Dr.  Garnett's 
quiet  rejoinder  that  "this  deliverance  will  be  weighed  by 


REMARKS   ON   SHELLEY  25 

those  to  whose  lot  it  may  fall  to  determine  Mr.  Arnold's 
own  place  as  a  critic."  Dr.  Garnett  adds  that,  in  an  age 
when  all  letters  approximate  to  the  ideal  set  by  men  of 
business,  Shelley's  alone,  among  those  of  his  time,  rank 
with  Gray's,  Pope's,  Cowper's,  or  Walpole's  in  possessing 
a  certain  classical  impress  similar  to  that  of  deliberate 
artistic  work;  and,  secondly,  that  they  exhibit  the  mind  of 
the  poet  as  clearly  as  Marlborough's  do  the  mind  of  the 
general,  or  Macaulay's  the  mind  of  the  man  of  letters. 
Their  two  prime  qualities  are  beauty  of  form  and  trans- 
parency; fitness  of  words,  sweetness  of  cadence,  mod- 
ulation of  feeling  in  immediate  response  to  thought 
and  image,  all  conspiring  to  make  up  perfection  of  utter- 
ance, are  continually  present,  but  not  through  erasure  and 
elaboration.  Shelley's  self-training  in  literature,  almost 
unrivaled  as  an  apprenticeship  in  its  length  and  continu- 
ity, more  comprehensive,  profound,  and  ardent  than 
Pope's,  more  vital  than  Milton's,  had  made  such  literary 
lucidity  and  grace  the  habit  of  his  pen,  and  he  was  for- 
tunate in  employing  his  gift  upon  subjects  intrinsically 
most  interesting  to  cultivated  men:  upon  the  art  and 
landscape  of  Italy,  or  his  own  always  high  human  rela- 
tions, or  his  poetic  moods. 

In  what  he  says  of  statues  and  paintings  he  shows  but 
slight  knowledge  of  art.  The  keenness  of  his  perceptions 
and  the  warmth  of  his  feelings  made  him  particularly 
open  to  sensuous  effects,  so  that  in  general  he  worships 
the  later  schools.  In  painting,  especially,  he  can  hardly 
be  considered  a  safe  guide  for  others,  because  his  praise 
or  censure  is  largely  dependent  on  his  temperament  for 
its  justification:  a  picture  which  is  consonant  with  his  own 
imagination,  and  stirs  it,  is  thereby  raised  and  glorified, 
but  one  whose  theme  would  have  been  differently  de- 


26  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

veloped  by  himself  is  at  once  made  pale  by  contrast  witK 
the  quick  visions  of  his  own  vividly  pictorial  mind.  Here 
is  a  portion  of  his  description  of  a  Christ  Beatified: — 

"The  countenance  is  heavy,  as  it  were,  with  the  rapture 
of  the  spirit;  the  lips  parted,  but  scarcely  parted,  with 
the  breath  of  intense  but  regulated  passion;  the  eyes  are 
calm  and  benignant;  the  whole  features  harmonized  in 
majesty  and  sweetness." 

One  cannot  but  feel  that  the  face  which  Shelley  thus 
summons  up  before  us  bears  the  same  relation  to  the 
original  as  what  the  dull-minded  call  his  plagiarisms 
from  Lodge  do  to  that  poet's  lyrics.  Shelley  often  paints 
the  picture  over  upon  the  outlines  of  the  old  canvas;  but 
this  transforming  or  penetrating  power,  as  it  will  be 
differently  named  just  as  one  believes  the  given  picture 
to  lack  or  possess  what  Shelley  saw  in  it,  lends  such 
passages  not  only  surpassing  beauty,  but  a  real  value  as 
interpretations  of  art.  Much  as  Ruskin  would  differ 
from  Shelley's  judgments,  the  two  are  essentially  similar 
in  their  mode  of  treatment,  and  in  their  faculty  of  giving 
the  equivalent  of  form  and  color  in  eloquence. 

The  description  of  landscape,  which  is  another  prin- 
cipal topic,  possesses  even  more  plainly  classic  beauty. 
Whether  Shelley  writes  of  nature  in  her  wild  and  pic- 
turesque scenes,  or  where  the  presence  of  man  has  added 
pathos  or  dignity  to  her  loveliness;  whether  he  flashes 
the  view  upon  us  in  one  perfect  line,  or  unfolds  it  slowly 
in  unconfused  detail,  he  displays  the  highest  power  in 
this  field  of  literature.  This  view  from  the  Forum  of 
Pompeii,  which,  instead  of  being  robed  with  "the  gray 
veil  of  his  own  words,"  seems  filled  with  "the  purple 
noon's  transparent  light,"  cannot  be  surpassed  as  speech 
at  once  familiar  and  noble:  — 


REMARKS   ON    SHELLEY  27 

"At  the  upper  end,  supported  on  an  elevated  platform, 
stands  the  temple  of  Jupiter.  Under  the  colonnade  of 
its  portico  we  sate,  and  pulled  out  our  oranges,  and 
figs,  and  bread,  and  medlars  —  sorry  fare,  you  will  say 
-  and  rested  to  eat.  Here  was  a  magnificent  spectacle. 
Above  and  between  the  multitudinous  shafts  of  the  sun- 
shining  columns  was  seen  the  sea,  reflecting  the  purple 
noon  of  heaven  above  it,  and  supporting,  as  it  were,  on 
its  line  the  dark,  lofty  mountains  of  Sorrento,  of  a  blue 
inexpressibly  deep,  and  tinged  toward  their  summits  with 
streaks  of  new-fallen  snow.  Between  was  one  small  green 
island.  To  the  right  was  Capreae,  Inarime,  Prochyta, 
and  Misenum.  Behind  was  the  single  summit  of  Vesu- 
vius, rolling  forth  volumes  of  thick  white  smoke,  whose 
foam-like  column  was  sometimes  darted  into  the  clear 
dark  sky,  and  fell  in  little  streaks  along  the  wind.  Be- 
tween Vesuvius  and  the  nearer  mountains,  as  through  a 
chasm,  was  seen  the  main  line  of  the  loftiest  Apennines 
to  the  east.  The  day  was  radiant  and  warm.  Every  now 
and  then  we  heard  subterranean  thunder  of  Vesuvius ;  its 
distant,  deep  peals  seemed  to  shake  the  very  air  and  light 
of  day,  which  interpenetrated  our  frames  with  the  sullen 
and  tremendous  sound." 

Thus  he  wrote  when  merely  passive  to  nature's  influ- 
ences; but  when  he  begins  to  think  he  irradiates  the 
scene;  he  lifts  it  with  his  aspiration  and  softens  it  with 
his  regret;  he  brings  it  near  by  reminiscences  of  the 
English  fields  and  cliffs  and  streams;  he  informs  it  with 
the  large  interests  of  the  intellectual  life;  and  not  in- 
frequently he  concludes  with  a  passage  which,  in  the 
arrangement  of  its  images,  the  sequence  of  its  thought 
and  feeling,  the  unity  of  its  effect,  in  all  except  metrical 
structure,  is  a  poem.  Many  paragraphs  might  be  cited 


28  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

which  show  the  character  of  his  genius  as  directly  as 
do  his  verses,  and  which  justify  the  claim  advanced  for 
them  as  having  the  permanent  interest  of  ideal  beauty. 

The  principal  charm  of  these  letters,  however,  as  Dr. 
Garnett  says,  is  not  artistic,  but  moral.  It  is  not  meant 
to  refer  by  this  term  to  the  practical  morality  of  Shel- 
ley's deeds,  or  to  his  conscientiousness,  humanity,  self- 
sacrifice,  or  other  such  qualities  as  they  are  here  dis- 
played; of  these  there  is  no  longer  need  to  speak.  Nor 
is  it  meant  simply  to  express  the  gratification  one  feels 
at  finding  that  Shelley,  unlike  many  men  of  letters  who 
disappoint  us  by  being  only  common  mortals  in  private 
life,  never  falls  below  our  conception  of  him,  indicative  as 
it  is  of  his  purity  that  his  "unpremeditated  song"  does 
not  fail  to  reach  the  height  of  his  great  argument.  What 
impresses  one  most  is  rather  the  character  of  the  life 
itself,  of  the  mind  to  which  "trust  in  all  things  high  came 
natural,"  that  moved  with  equal  ease  among  the  things 
of  beauty,  on  the  heights  of  thoughts,  or  amid  the  com- 
mon and  trivial  cares  of  household  life  and  in  the  offices 
of  friendship,  and  knew  no  difference  in  the  level  of  his 
life,  so  single  was  his  nature  and  so  completely  expressed 
in  all  he  did.  In  the  most  ideal  passages,  in  those  most 
impersonal,  one  does  not  lose  the  sense  of  friendliness  in 
them,  of  the  sweet  human  relationship  which  underlies 
the  telling  of  what  he  has  to  say,  and  keeps  the  letters  in 
their  appropriate  sphere.  They  are  not  rhapsodies,  or 
soliloquies,  or  disquisitions;  in  other  words,  the  visita- 
tions of  the  spirit  that  came  to  Shelley,  and  left  record 
of  themselves  in  this  beauty  and  eloquence  and  imagi- 
native passion,  did  not  isolate  him  even  momentarily, 
and  could  not  sever  him  from  his  friends.  Who  these 
were,  we  know  well  enough:  Miss  Kitchener,  the  blue- 


REMARKS   ON    SHELLEY  29 

stocking;  Hogg,  the  betrayer;  the  Williams  and  Gis- 
bornes,  who  seem  to  have  belonged  to  the  class  of  people 
known  as  satisfying;  Peacock,  who,  with  all  his  nym- 
pholepsy,  was  a  born  beef -eater;  Smith,  the  obliging; 
Hunt,  the  "wren,"  and  Byron,  the  "eagle,"  in  Shelley's 
nomenclature  —  the  too  fortunate  people  who  knew  Shel- 
ley and  whom  he  loved.  They  formed  the  environment, 
which  needs  to  be  kept  in  mind  by  any  who  would  esti- 
mate Shelley's  moral  power;  amid  them  he  lived  his  high 
life  and  made  it  theirs,  in  the  case  of  the  most,  during 
their  communion  with  him.  In  a  vague  analogical  way 
he  sometimes  brings  to  mind  the  Greek  gods,  who,  with  all 
their  divine  attributes  of  beauty,  power,  dignity,  were 
singular  among  deities  for  their  companionableness ; 
Shelley  had  that  divine  quality  of  being  familiar  and  re- 
taining his  original  brightness.  Toward  Byron  alone 
does  he  show  any  repulsion;  he  recognized  Byron's  ad- 
mirable qualities,  but  he  was  alienated  by  the  latter's 
selfishness,  worldliness,  and  earthliness,  even  while  he 
kept  terms  of  amity.  Shelley's  sentence  on  Byron  is 
most  serious  evidence  against  him,  and  it  is  now  sup- 
ported by  much  that  Shelley  could  not  have  known;  but 
it  need  not  be  discussed  here. 

It  is  especially  fortunate  that  the  letters  exhibit  him 
after  his  boyhood,  with  its  false  starts,  its  follies  and 
prejudices,  its  narrowness  and  confusion,  was  passed; 
of  that  time  we  get  only  a  noble  echo  in  his  sad  remem- 
brance, amid  his  seeming  failure,  of  the  lofty  purpose 
with  which  he  had  entered  life,  while  we  see  the  depth 
unconfused  by  the  tumult  of  his  soul.  In  these  last 
years,  it  is  true,  the  thwarting  of  his  practical  instinct 
was  ending  in  hopelessness;  but  if  the  earthly  paradise 
that  was  the  faith  of  his  youth  was  now  fading  away, 


30  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

he  was  lifting  his  eyes  to  the  city  in  the  heavens,  and  had 
acknowledged  the  vanity  of  seeking  the  ideal  he  knew, 
except  in  the  eternal;  he  had  worked  out  his  salvation. 
Perhaps  after  all  we  do  wrong  to  lament  his  death;  with 
that  tragedy,  in  which  every  thought  of  Shelley  involun- 
tarily concludes,  his  work  as  a  quickener  of  the  spirit 
was  accomplished.  More  finished  works  of  art  he  might 
have  given  to  us;  he  could  not  have  left  a  nobler  or 
more  enkindling  memory.  These  letters  help  in  the 
still  necessary  labor  of  clearing  away  the  misconceptions 
concerning  him.  In  them  one  sees  him  only  in  the  quiet 
of  his  soul,  and  will  come  to  a  better  knowledge  and 
perhaps  a  higher  truth  concerning  him  than  is  possible 
by  reading  his  changeful  poems  alone. 


SIR  GEORGE  BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE, 
AND  WORDSWORTH 

SIR  GEORGE  BEAUMONT  appears  to  have  been  one  of 
the  most  agreeable  of  men.  He  had  not  merely  high 
breeding,  but  humanity  of  disposition,  delightful  compan- 
ionableness,  and  the  refinement  that  springs  from  artistic 
pursuits.  Haydon  accuses  his  manners  of  a  want  of 
moral  courage.  "What  his  taste  dictated  to  be  right,  he 
would  shrink  from  asserting  if  it  shocked  the  prejudices 
of  others  or  put  himself  to  a  moment's  inconvenience," 
was  the  fault  that  this  critic  had  in  mind;  but  this  is  only 
to  class  him  with  the  men  who  do  not  think  that  the 
truth  is  always  to  be  spoken  in  society,  and  prefer  tact 
to  an  aggressive  egotism.  Sir  Humphry  Davy  notices 
especially  that  he  was  a  "remarkably  sensible  man,  which 
I  mention  because  it  is  somewhat  remarkable  in  a  painter 
of  genius  who  is  at  the  same  time  a  man  of  rank  and  an 
exceedingly  amusing  companion."  Sou  they  was  struck 
by  the  apparent  happiness  of  his  life,  and  the  absence  of 
any  reference  to  afflictions  or  anxieties  that  he  might  have 
experienced,  and  says  that  he  "had  as  little  liking  for 
country  sports  as  for  public  business  of  any  kind,"  be- 
ing absorbed  by  art  and  nature;  and,  to  add  Scott's  kind 
words  of  him  in  his  diary,  that  excellent  judge  writes, 
"Sir  George  Beaumont's  dead;  by  far  the  most  sensible 
and  pleasing  man  I  ever  knew.  Kind,  too,  in  his  nature, 
and  generous  —  gentle  in  society,  and  of  those  mild  man- 
ners which  tend  to  soften  the  causticity  of  the  general 

31 


32  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

London  tone  of  persiflage  and  personal  satire.  I  am 
very  sorry  —  as  much  as  it  is  in  my  nature  to  be  —  for 
one  whom  I  could  see  but  seldom."  This  is  a  concert 
of  praise  which  it  is  a  pleasure  to  associate  with  the  name 
of  the  man  who  was,  chiefly,  the  founder  of  the  National 
Gallery  in  Trafalgar  Square. 

He  was  a  friend  of  the  artists  of  his  time,  and  a 
patron  of  Wilkie  and  Haydon  when  they  needed  aid. 
In  the  latter's  autobiography  there  is  a  bright  account 
of  a  fortnight's  visit  paid  by  these  two  to  Coleorton, 
Sir  George's  country-seat,  which  brings  the  interior  life 
there  vividly  to  the  eye,  though  it  borrows  something 
from  the  unconscious  humor  of  the  narrator,  who  always 
fills  the  scene  with  himself  in  the  leading  part.  One 
pauses  to  note  a  characteristic  sentence  of  the  incor- 
rigible beggar  in  which  he  breaks  out  with  the  indig- 
nant remark,  "All  my  friends  were  always  advising  me 
what  to  do  instead  of  advising  the  Government  what 
to  do  for  me."  Sir  George,  however,  had  other  friends, 
and  most  noteworthy  of  all,  Wordsworth,  of  whom  he 
first  heard  from  Coleridge.  Before  meeting  him,  un- 
derstanding that  the  two  friends  wished  to  live  in  the 
same  neighborhood,  he  bought  and  presented  to  Words- 
worth the  little  property  of  Applethwaite  near  Greta 
Hall,  Coleridge's  abode.  Wordsworth  never  used  the 
ground  for  the  purpose  for  which  it  was  given,  but  it 
remained  in  his  possession.  From  this  time,  1803,  a  close 
friendship  grew  up  between  his  family  at  Grasmere  and 
the  one  at  Coleorton,  grounded  upon  common  interests 
and  cemented  with  mutual  exchanges  of  kindness  and 
regard,  so  that  it  survived  until  the  death  of  Sir  George 
and  Lady  Beaumont,  herself  an  excellent  woman,  of 
whom  Crabb  Robinson  wrote  "She  is  a  gentlewoman  of 


BEAUMONT,   COLERIDGE,   WORDSWORTH        33 

great  sweetness  and  dignity,  I  should  think  among  the 
most  interesting  persons  in  the  country." 

Of  the  two  poets  Coleridge  was  at  first  more  inti- 
mate with  the  Beaumonts.  This  was  in  1803,  the  period 
of  his  illness,  just  previous  to  the  voyage  to  Malta.  The 
letters  he  wrote  are  very  painful  to  read.  The  sub- 
ject is  usually  the  ego;  and  in  reading  the  apologies 
of  the  writer  for  treating  of  this  ever-present  theme,  and 
his  observations  on  his  own  lack  of  vanity  and  the 
danger  he  is  in  of  undervaluing  his  powers  and  works, 
one  can  scarcely  fail  to  be  struck  by  the  identity  in  many 
respects  of  the  egotism  of  the  overweening  and  of  the 
self -depreciating  kinds.  The  aspects  are  different,  but 
the  weakness  has  the  same  root.  In  Coleridge  it  was, 
perhaps,  no  more  than  a  question  of  the  state  of  his 
stomach  whether  his  assiduous  interest  in  himself  should 
result  in  intellectual  pride  or  in  self-abasement;  but 
without  giving  too  severe  a  touch,  it  is  clear  enough  that 
his  eye,  when  fixed  on  himself,  was  on  the  wrong  object. 

The  letters  to  the  Beaumonts  are  characterized  by 
this  complaining  and  absorbing  egotism  of  the  invalid, 
unfortified  by  patience,  resolution,  or  even  self-respect. 
The  ravages  of  disease  in  its  physical  aspects,  the  laying 
bare  of  bodily  conditions  and  symptoms  of  decay,  would 
be  in  themselves  intolerably  disagreeable,  but  it  is  much 
worse  to  be  obliged  to  attend  at  the  sick-bed  of  the 
mind;  and  in  Coleridge's  case  the  internal  weakness  of 
the  spirit  excites  the  greatest  pity,  and  this  feeling  nearly 
passes  involuntarily  into  disgust.  The  sensibility  of  his 
nervous  organization  was  acute.  He  speaks  of  times 
when,  as  he  was  accusing  himself  of  insensibility  through 
incapacity  to  feel,  his  "whole  frame  has  gone  crash,  as 
it  were."  Under  the  excitement  of  his  emotions,  he 


34  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

dissolves  in  weakness;  the  spectacle  is  not  a  pleasant  one; 
there  is  something  almost  ignoble  in  such  loss  of  self- 
control.  When  Wordsworth  recited  to  him,  if  one  can 
fancy  such  a  thing,  the  entire  thirteen  books  on  the 
growth  of  his  own  mind,  in  1807,  Coleridge  composed 
a  poem,  not  very  coherent  or  noble,  though  with  personal 
pathos,  in  which  he  says  that  when  he  rose  from  his  seat, 
he  "found  himself  in  prayer."  It  was  apparently  not 
an  unusual  termination  to  the  access  of  emotion,  and 
it  occurred  more  than  once  in  his  relations  with  the 
Beaumonts.  The  mention  of  it,  however,  in  his  corre- 
spondence with  them,  offends  one,  not  in  itself,  but  by 
the  manner  of  it;  indeed,  the  manner  of  his  earlier  let- 
ters is  indescribable.  Their  sentiment  is  so  tremulous 
and  overwrought  with  fever  that  they  resemble  maunder- 
ing; they  are  "sicklied  o'er"  with  mental  disease,  and 
belong  to  the  pathology  of  genius. 

One  long  epistle,  in  which  he  devotes  himself  to  an 
analysis  of  his  mental  condition  at  the  time  when  he 
was  what  is  now  known  as  a  Social  Democrat,  shows  by 
an  eminent  example  in  what  ways  the  minds  of  young 
men  of  enthusiasm,  who  have  caught  the  contagion  of 
new  ideas,  commonly  act,  and  how  their  tongues  are 
kept  going.  Coleridge  and  Southey  were  rampant 
young  radicals  for  about  ten  months,  and  might  many 
times  have  been  justly  thrown  into  jail  for  the  use  of 
unlawful  language  and  seditiously  fomenting  the  passions 
of  the  people.  Coleridge  ascribes  the  beginning  of  his 
ramblings  from  the  true  path  of  respectable  politics 
partly  to  his  intellectual  isolation  among  his  relatives 
and  virtuous  acquaintances  generally,  who  thought  that 
his  "opinions  were  the  drivel  of  a  babe,  but  the  guilt 
attached  to  them  —  this  was  the  gray  hair  and  rigid 


BEAUMONT,   COLERIDGE,  WORDSWORTH       35 

muscle  of  inveterate  depravity;"  and  partly,  he  declares, 
it  was  due  to  the  thirst  for  kindness  planted  in  himself, 
in  the  "mey  who,"  he  says,  "from  my  childhood  have  had 
no  avarice,  no  ambition,  whose  very  vanity  in  my  vainest 
moments  was  nine-tenths  of  it  the  desire  and  delight 
and  necessity  of  loving  and  of  being  beloved,"  -  needs 
which  he  found  satisfied  in  the  welcome  and  company 
of  "the  Democrats."  So  he  fell  among  evil  companions. 
On  becoming  an  agitator  upon  the  platform  he  suc- 
cumbed to  the  temptations  of  the  fluent  speaker,  gifted 
"with  an  ebullient  fancy,  a  flowing  utterance,  a  light 
and  dancing  heart,  and  a  disposition  to  catch  time  by 
the  very  rapidity  of  my  own  motion,  and  to  speak 
vehemently  from  mere  verbal  associations;  choosing 
sentences  and  sentiments  for  the  very  reason  which 
would  have  made  me  recoil  with  a  dying  away  of  the 
heart  and  unutterable  horror  from  the  actions  expressed 
in  such  sentiments  and  sentences,  namely,  because  they 
were  wild  and  original,  and  vehement  and  fantastic." 
Here  is  a  choice  specimen  of  his  eloquence,  on  the  oc- 
casion of  a  supper  by  some  lord,  to  commemorate  an 
Austrian  victory:  "This  is  a  true  Lord's  Supper  in  the 
communion  of  darkness!  This  is  a  Eucharist  of  Hell! 
a  sacrament  of  misery!  over  each  morsel  and  each  drop 
of  which  the  spirit  of  some  murdered  innocent  cries 
aloud  to  God,  This  is  my  body!  and  this  is  my  blood!" 
There  is  one  sin  against  society,  however,  which  he 
declined  to  commit,  and  he  took  great  credit  to  himself 
for  his  obstinate  refusal.  He  joined  no  party,  club,  or 
any  of  the  radical  societies,  which  he  characterizes  as 
"ascarides  in  the  bowels  of  the  state,  subsisting  on  the 
weakness  and  diseasedness,  and  having  for  their  final 
object  the  death  of  that  state,  whose  life  had  been  their 


36  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

birth  and  growth,  and  continued  to  be  their  soul  nourish- 
ment." He  remained  outside  of  these  entangling  alli- 
ances, a  free-lance  speechifier,  in  the  condition  of  mind 
of  the  willing  martyr:  "The  very  clank  of  the  chains 
that  were  to  be  put  about  my  limbs  would  not  at  that 
time  have  deterred  me  from  a  strong  phrase  or  striking 
metaphor,  although  I  had  had  no  other  inducement  to 
the  use  of  the  same  except  the  wantonness  of  luxuriant 
imagination,  and  my  aversion  to  abstain  from  anything 
simply  because  it  was  dangerous."  Such  was  Coleridge 
at  twenty-four  years  —  the  age  at  which  Emmett  was 
executed;  whose  death  called  out  this  long  letter  of  rem- 
iniscences concerning  his  own  career  as  an  agitator,  and 
of  reflections  upon  the  impulses  and  justification  of 
revolutionary  orators,  their  temptations,  errors,  and  illu- 
sions. He  understood  the  fate  of  Emmett  with  greater 
clearness  because  of  this  little  episode  in  his  own  life, 
and  it  is  noticeable  that  he  has  the  grace  not  to  think  that 
the  young  patriot's  career  bore  too  much  resemblance 
to  his  own;  but  this  confession  of  his  foolishness  in 
general,  spread  out  somewhat  magniloquently  before  the 
eyes  of  his  aristocratic  correspondent,  is  a  lesson  in  hu- 
man nature  well  worth  a  moment's  attention  from  con- 
servative and  orderly  people. 

Coleridge's  career  —  if  a  brief  digression  may  be  par- 
doned here  —  was  only  too  much  in  keeping  with  the 
temperament  of  these  letters  to  the  Beaumonts.  Wher- 
ever one  comes  upon  it  in  the  memoirs  of  the  time,  the 
story  is  the  same.  Soften  it  as  we  may,  that  career  was 
one  of  those,  too  frequent  among  men  of  letters,  that 
can  never  be  told,  so  marred  by  disease  and  by  moral 
feebleness,  so  full  of  shame  and  supineness  and  waste, 
that  it  must  be  kept  out  of  sight.  During  the  years 


BEAUMONT,   COLERIDGE,  WORDSWORTH        37 

of  his  maturity  he  was  a  broken  man,  and  knew  him- 
self to  be  such;  from  the  time  that,  in  becoming  the 
victim  of  opium,  he  lost  what  little  will-power  was  orig- 
inally his,  he  felt  that  the  spirit  of  imagination  had 
left  his  house  of  life,  and  in  its  place  was  henceforward 

"Sense  of  past  youth,  and  manhood  come  in  vain, 
And  genius  given,  and  knowledge  won  in  vain;  " 

and  in  this  mood  of  pervading  despondency  he  seems 
always  in  fancy  to  be  haunting  the  grave  of  his  dead  self. 
This  consciousness  of  his  loss,  though  it  had  more  of 
the  stupor  of  despair  than  of  the  sharpness  of  penitence, 
lends  some  impressiveness  to  his  story;  but  this  pain 
was  not  searching  enough  to  save  him  for  himself,  nor  of 
a  kind  to  make  men  oblivious  of  those  violent  contrasts 
in  his  life  which  offend  our  sense  of  Tightness.  It  is 
a  morally  confusing  spectacle  to  see  genius  professing 
the  highest  knowledge  of  the  secret  things  of  God,  but 
itself  wrecked;  and  it  requires  something  more  than  the 
poet's  sorrow  at  the  withering  of  his  wreath  to  reconcile 
such  an  antithesis. 

Then,  too,  although  Coleridge's  poetic  imagination 
undoubtedly  was  quenched  at  once,  or  gave  out  only 
brief  and  random  flashes  in  his  manhood,  it  may  well 
be  questioned  whether  the  waste  of  his  faculties  was  not 
due  quite  as  much  to  mismanagement  of  the  mind  as 
to  the  palsying  of  his  powers  of  effort,  purpose,  or 
orderly  reduction  of  thought.  He  lived  in  the  period 
of  universal  philosophers,  and  in  his  study  of  meta- 
physics and  theology  in  Germany  he  must  have  fixed  in 
his  mind  the  habit  of  including  the  omne  scibile  in  his 
system.  This  was  the  more  easy  for  him,  as  he  had 
in  unusual  proportion  that  false  comprehensiveness 


38  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

which  seizes  on  knowledge,  not  by  all  its  relations  as 
it  stands  in  the  body  of  science,  but  by  some  particular 
relation  which  it  may  seem  to  bear,  truly  or  untruly,  to 
some  preconceived  idea  that  has  been  taken  as  the  or- 
ganizing principle  of  the  new  scheme.  It  is  because 
of  their  common  participation  in  this  method  that  poetry 
and  philosophy,  in  the  old  sense,  approach  so  much  nearer 
each  other  than  either  does  to  science.  It  is  plain  to 
any  one  who  reads  the  topics  of  Coleridge's  discourses 
that  his  mind  ranged  through  a  vast  circuit  of  knowledge 
habitually,  but  also  that  it  touched  the  facts  only  at 
single  points  and  superficially;  in  other  words,  he  dis- 
plays compass  rather  than  grasp.  In  dealing  with  the 
mass  of  his  learning,  he  showed  no  lack  of  systematiz- 
ing power,  though  it  may  easily  be  believed  that  in  con- 
versation with  chance  visitors  the  fine  filaments  of  logi- 
cal connection  escaped  their  sight.  The  trouble  was  in 
the  original  mode  of  elaborating  the  system  —  the  old 
Greek  way  of  philosophizing  by  subtle  manipulation  of 
analogies,  convenient  facts,  half -understood  harmonies  of 
this  with  that,  arbitrary  constructions,  with  now  and 
then  a  dead  plunge  into  the  unfathomable.  To  borrow 
Coleridge's  own  distinction,  this  procedure  is  to  logic 
what  fancy  is  to  the  imagination  —  a  freak  of  the  mind 
partly  out  of  relation  to  the  truth  of  things.  It  is  the 
modern  form  of  scholasticism. 

Coleridge,  however,  whose  speculative  powers  were 
thus  employed,  is  believed  to  have  been  a  great  light  to 
those  who  had  eyes  to  see.  What  particular  truth 
Maurice  and  others  derived  from  him  is,  nevertheless, 
not  evident.  He  shared  the  awakening  power  that 
idealists  possess,  generally  in  proportion  to  their  con- 
sistency and  the  intensity  of  their  personal  conviction. 


BEAUMONT,   COLERIDGE,   WORDSWORTH        39 

Idealism,  by  the  very  fact  that  it  is  an  enfranchisement 
from  sense,  is  a  tonic  to  the  mind;  it  quickens  the 
activity  of  thought  and  facilitates  its  process  be- 
cause it  assumes  the  mastery  of  the  universe,  and  makes 
reality  pliable  to  its  hand.  This  may  or  may  not  be 
lawful,  but  it  generates  a  feeling  of  command  and  of 
liberty  highly  favorable  to  spiritual  development.  To 
some  men  impressionable  on  that  side  of  their  nature 
Coleridge  was  the  giver  of  this  freedom,  and  this  has  been 
the  case  especially  with  members  of  the  clergy  who  are 
closely  attached  to  theological  dogma.  Such  persons 
found  in  Coleridge's  mind  the  rare  and  curious  coexist- 
ence of  fixed  dogma  with  incessant  speculation:  he 
afforded  the  sense  of  untrammeled  investigation  without 
once  disturbing  the  certainty  of  the  prejudged  cause. 
This  phantom  of  liberalism  was  a  very  quieting  tutelar 
genius  to  some  educated  men,  who  thus  kept  up  a  sem- 
blance of  thinking;  but  influence  of  this  sort  is  neces- 
sarily transitory.  His  Scriptural  renderings  of  philosophy 
give  place  to  those  of  other  theologians,  who  rationalize 
on  new  grounds  of  scientific  knowledge  instead  of  Ger- 
man metaphysics,  while  the  stimulation  that  was  fur- 
nished by  his  idealism  may  be  more  simply  and  directly 
derived  from  less  involved  and  abstruse  thinkers.  His 
theology  and  metaphysics,  in  pursuit  of  which  he  wasted 
his  powers,  are  already  seen  to  be  transient.  On  the 
other  hand,  his  criticism  has  articulated  the  works  of 
minor  authors  who  have  themselves  written  in  a  formal 
style,  nor  has  its  influence  been  harmed  by  its  frequent 
over-refinement  and  f ancif ulness ;  and  his  poetry  has 
remained  untouched  by  time.  It  belongs  to  the  period 
of  his  early  enthusiasm,  before  he  had  become  too  dulled 
for  the  breath  of  inspiration  to  kindle  him;  and  fortu- 


40  LITERARY  MEMOIRS 

nately  one  can  read  nearly  all  the  best  of  it  without  a 
thought  of  the  dreary  after-life  of  the  poet,  which  has 
no  vital  interest  to  any  one  except  as  an  illustration  of 
prolonged  failure  due  to  many  causes,  but  not  less  to  a 
lack  of  mental  than  of  moral  self-government.  He  in- 
filtrated a  peculiar  intellectual  life  into  the  clergy  of 
his  time,  but  in  them  it  came  to  nothing  more  tangible 
and  permanent  than  in  himself.  Will  it  be  long  before 
Carlyle's  picture  of  the  Seer  at  Highgate  will  be  the 
only  supplement  to  "The  Ancient  Mariner,"  so  far  as  the 
general  knowledge  of  Coleridge  is  concerned,  and  all 
between  nothing  but  the  weariness  of  the  opium-eater's 
hiding? 

Perhaps  the  serenity  of  Wordsworth's  home  at  Gras- 
mere  gains  by  the  miserable  contrast.  Thither  Coleridge 
came  for  invigoration ;  thither,  when  he  finally  separated 
from  his  wife,  he  brought  or  sent  the  children;  and  when 
he  could  not  or  would  not  retire  to  the  hospitality  and 
pleasant  companionship  of  the  household  where  he  found 
the  feminine  sympathy  which  he  had  failed  of  in  his 
own  marriage,  Wordsworth  would  set  out  to  visit  him 
with  moral  support  and  cheer.  A  different  interest  united 
Wordsworth  and  Sir  George  Beaumont;  it  was  the  love 
of  nature.  Landscape  was  the  subject  of  their  thoughts. 
Sir  George  painted  it,  Wordsworth  poetized  it;  in  the 
life  of  both  it  was  a  permanent  resource  to  which  they 
constantly  resorted,  and  they  liked  to  blend  their  work 
in  this  solvent  —  the  pictures  of  the  one  becoming  a 
text  for  the  poems  of  the  other,  and  vice  versa.  The 
interest  Wordsworth  felt  in  landscape  gardening,  in  modi- 
fying wild  nature,  and  his  ideas  regarding  the  methods 
and  aims  of  the  art,  are  brought  out  by  the  part  he 
had  in  planning  the  grounds  at  Coleorton.  Sir  George 


BEAUMONT,   COLERIDGE,   WORDSWORTH       41 

rebuilt  these,  and,  in  laying  out  the  whiter  garden  in 
particular,  he  had  frequent  recourse  to  the  taste  of  his 
friend;  and  as  Wordsworth  was  that  year  occupying 
the  old  farmhouse  on  the  estate,  the  business  of  thinking 
out  and  overseeing  this  work  was  at  once  diversion  and 
restful  employment  amid  his  poetic  labors.  He  wrote 
at  great  length  on  the  subject  to  Lady  Beaumont,  and 
laid  before  her  an  elaborate  plan  full  of  ivy,  holly, 
juniper,  yews,  open  sunshine  glades,  flower-borders,  an 
alley,  a  bower,  a  spray-fountain,  a  quarry,  a  distant 
spire,  a  pool  with  two  gold-fish,  a  vine-clad  old  cottage, 
and  other  things,  which  are  artificial  enough  in  the  read- 
ing, but  in  reality  seem  remarkably  well  fitted  to  mingle 
the  charm  of  cultivation  with  the  wildness  of  the  ever- 
greens, and  make  a  sheltering  retreat  where  the  life  of 
nature  would  linger  longest  in  autumn  and  revive  earli- 
est in  the  warm  sun. 

"Painters  and  poets,"  he  wrote,  "have  had  the  credit 
of  being  reckoned  the  fathers  of  English  gardening,"  and 
he  felt  thus  in  the  line  of  succession  in  the  art.  It  is 
most  interesting  to  observe  how  he  obtains  suggestions 
from  the  poets,  and  makes  their  Pegasus  plough  his  field. 
He  was,  of  course,  opposed  to  undue  interference  with 
nature  and  the  deformity  it  occasions,  and  also  to  the 
ostentation  of  the  wealth  or  station  of  the  owner.  "It 
is  a  substitution  of  little  things  for  great  when  we  would 
put  a  whole  country  into  a  noblemen's  livery,"  he  says 
with  spirit,  and,  declaring  that  the  laying  out  of  grounds 
is  a  liberal  art  not  unlike  poetry  and  painting,  he  goes 
on  to  protest  against  the  monopoly  of  nature  by  the 
great  ones  of  the  earth,  upon  high  esthetic  grounds. 
"No  liberal  art,"  he  says,  "aims  merely  at  the  gratifica- 
tion of  an  individual  or  a  class;  the  painter  or  poet  is 


42  LITERARY  MEMOIRS 

degraded  in  proportion  as  he  does  so.  ...  If  this 
be  so  when  we  are  merely  putting  together  words  or 
colors,  how  much  more  ought  the  feeling  to  prevail  when 
we  are  in  the  midst  of  the  realities  of  things.  .  .  . 
What,  then,  shall  we  say  of  many  great  mansions  with 
their  unqualified  expulsion  of  human  creatures  from 
their  neighborhood,  happy  or  not  —  houses  which  do  what 
is  fabled  of  the  upas  tree  —  that  they  breathe  out  death 
and  desolation?"  These  strictures  on  the  aristocratic 
handling  of  land  he  continues  for  some  pages  in  an 
interesting  advocacy  of  esthetic  communism  —  still  a 
suggestive  topic.  This  sense  of  the  beauty  and  grandeur 
of  nature  as  a  universal  boon,  the  desire  to  humanize 
the  landscape  without  robbing  it  of  its  own  essential 
character  or  of  the  minor  charms  of  its  native  wildness, 
and  a  great  delight  in  his  own  practical  work  of  im- 
proving rubbish  heaps,  old  walls,  and  broken  ground 
into  a  winter  retreat  of  sunshine  and  evergreens  and 
red-berried  vines,  with  nooks  and  views  fit  for  a  poet's 
walk,  are  the  qualities  that  still  give  interest  to  those 
half  dozen  letters  about  planting  a  waste  acre  of  land. 
On  the  other  hand,  his  genius,  in  which  susceptibility 
to  nature  was  so  dominating  a  principle,  seldom  finds 
expression  in  the  prose  of  his  letters  with  nearly  the 
same  clearness  and  purity  as  in  his  poems.  There  is 
one  extract,  however,  which  must  be  given,  of  a  city 
scene  from  the  country  poet:  — 

"I  left  Coleridge  at  seven  o'clock  on  Sunday  morning 
and  walked  towards  the  city  in  a  very  thoughtful  and 
melancholy  state  of  mind.  I  had  passed  through  Temple 
Bar  and  by  St.  Dunstan's,  noticing  nothing,  and  entirely 
occupied  with  my  own  thoughts,  when,  looking  up,  I  saw 
before  me  the  avenue  of  Fleet  Street,  silent,  empty,  and 


BEAUMONT,   COLERIDGE,   WORDSWORTH        43 

pure  white,  with  a  sprinkling  of  new-fallen  snow,  not  a 
cart  or  a  carriage  to  obstruct  the  view,  no  noise,  only 
a  few  soundless  and  dusky  foot-passengers  here  and 
there.  You  remember  the  elegant  line  of  the  curve  of 
Ludgate  Hill  in  which  the  avenue  would  terminate,  and 
beyond,  and  towering  above  it,  was  the  huge  and  majestic 
form  of  St.  Paul's  solemnized  by  a  thin  veil  of  falling 
snow.  I  cannot  say  how  much  I  was  affected  at  this 
unthought-of  sight  in  such  a  place,  and  what  a  blessing 
I  felt  there  is  in  habits  of  exalted  imagination.  My 
sorrow  was  controlled,  and  my  uneasiness  of  mind  —  not 
quieted  and  relieved  altogether  —  seemed  at  once  to 
receive  the  gift  of  an  anchor  of  security." 

This  is  not  poetry,  but  it  is  from  the  same  pen  as  the 
sonnet  on  Westminster  Bridge. 

Besides  this  taste  for  landscape,  a  special  interest 
was  taken  by  both  friends  in  what  poetry  Wordsworth 
was  composing  from  time  to  time.  Wordsworth  again 
expatiates  on  the  "awful  truth  that  there  neither  is, 
nor  can  be,  any  genuine  enjoyment  of  poetry  among 
nineteen  out  of  twenty  of  those  persons  who  live,  or  wish 
to  live,  in  the  broad  light  of  the  world,"  that  is,  in  society; 
and  again  defines  his  aims,  "to  console  the  afflicted;  to 
add  sunshine  to  daylight,  by  making  the  happy  happier; 
to  teach  the  young  and  the  gracious  of  every  age  to  see, 
to  think,  and  feel,  and  therefore  become,  more  actively 
and  securely  virtuous,"  etc.  Here,  too,  are  the  calm 
and  patient  confidence  in  his  own  immortality,  a  serene 
foreknowledge  of  how  the  matter  would  end,  though 
there  are  some  dark  spots  in  his  prevision,  as  when  he 
says  that  "the  people  would  love  Peter  Bell"  if  only  the 
critics  would  let  them.  It  appears,  too,  that  these  poets 
were  discreet  in  their  confidential  criticism  of  each  other, 
and  by  no  means  blind  to  faults.  Wordsworth  notices 


44  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

that  in  Southey's  verse,  notwithstanding  picturesqueness 
and  romance  and  a  minor  touch  or  two,  "there  is  nothing 
that  shows  the  hand  of  the  great  master";  and  Cole- 
ridge, with  all  his  adoration  for  Wordsworth,  even  when 
declaring  that  he  regarded  the  tale  of  the  ruined  cot- 
tage in  the  "Excursion"  as  "the  finest  poem  in  our  lan- 
guage comparing  it  with  any  of  the  same  or  similar  length," 
could  yet  put  his  finger  on  the  very  center  of  weakness 
in  Wordsworth.  "I  have  sometimes  fancied,"  he  says, 
"that,  having  by  the  conjoint  operation  of  his  own  ex- 
periences, feelings  and  reasons  himself  convinced  him- 
self of  truths  which  the  generality  of  people  have  either 
taken  for  granted  from  their  infancy,  or  at  least  adopted 
in  early  life,  he  has  attached  all  their  own  depth  and 
weight  to  doctrines  and  words  which  come  almost  as 
truisms  or  commonplace  to  others." 

Wordsworth's  last  words  are  a  farewell;  they  illus- 
trate how  the  love  of  nature  and  enjoyment  of  it,  un- 
like most  of  youthful  emotions,  gain  an  increasing  glow 
with  years,  and  they  express  his  faith  and  life  in  the 
most  elementary  terms:  "I  never  had  a  higher  relish 
for  the  beauties  of  nature  than  during  this  spring,  nor 
enjoyed  myself  more.  What  manifold  reason,  my  dear 
George,  have  you  and  I  had  to  be  thankful  to  Provi- 
dence! Theologians  may  puzzle  their  heads  about 
dogmas  as  they  will;  the  religion  of  gratitude  cannot 
mislead  us.  Of  that  we  are  sure,  and  gratitude  is  the 
handmaid  to  hope,  and  hope  the  harbinger  of  faith.  I 
look  abroad  upon  nature,  I  think  of  the  best  part  of 
our  species,  I  lean  upon  my  friends,  and  I  meditate  upon 
the  Scriptures,  especially  the  Gospel  of  St.  John;  and 
my  creed  rises  up  of  itself  with  the  ease  of  an  exhala- 
tion, yet  a  fabric  of  adamant.  God  bless  you,  my  ever 
dear  friend." 


THOMAS  POOLE  AND  HIS  FRIENDS 

WHOEVER  has  read  the  memoirs  of  the  Lake  School 
must  have  a  lively  curiosity  to  know  more  of  Poole.  Cole- 
ridge drew  his  portrait  in  a  fine  passage  of  "Church 
and  State,"  as  a  type  of  strong,  practical  character.  De 
Quincey  described  him  in  "Autobiographical  Sketches" 
—  aa  stout,  plain-looking  farmer  leading  a  bachelor  life 
in  a  rustic,  old-fashioned  house/'  with  a  good  library, 
especially  in  political  philosophy,  having  some  experience 
of  travel,  and  "so  entirely  dedicated  to  the  service  of 
his  humble  fellow-countrymen,  the  hewers  of  wood  and 
drawers  of  water  in  this  southern  part  of  Somersetshire, 
that  for  many  miles  round  he  was  the  general  arbiter 
of  their  disputes,  the  guide  and  counsellor  of  their  diffi- 
culties." Wordsworth,  in  a  letter  to  him  asking  his  criti- 
cal opinion  of  "Michael,"  says:  "In  writing  it,  I  had 
your  character  often  before  my  eyes,  and  sometimes 
thought  I  was  delineating  such  a  man  as  you  yourself 
would  have  been  under  the  same  circumstances." 
Poole  was,  besides,  the  valued  friend  of  Rickman,  the 
statistician  and  compiler  of  the  first  British  census;  of 
Thomas  Wedgwood,  whose  career,  beginning  with  the 
experiments  in  photography  which  are  well  known,  was 
so  unfortunately  ended  by  incurable  disease;  of  Sir 
Humphrey  Davy,  and  of  others  of  the  most  useful  men 
of  the  time.  Both  personally  and  in  his  relations  with 
those  men  who  felt  the  revivifying  influence  of  the  French 

45 


46  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

Revolution  in  England,  he  presents  an  interesting  figure, 
and  his  memoir  not  only  helps  to  complete  our  knowl- 
edge of  Coleridge  particularly,  but  exemplifies  in  a  nota- 
ble way  the  characteristics  of  his  age  of  reform. 

Poole  is  the  more  attractive  because  of  the  humbleness 
of  the  means  by  which  he  made  his  life  remarkable. 
He  was  the  son  of  a  tanner  in  well-to-do  circumstances, 
at  Nether  Stowey,  in  the  region  of  the  Quantock  hills, 
and  was  bred  to  that  business;  but  he  had  a  thirst 
for  knowledge  which  was  perhaps  encouraged  in  the 
home  of  his  uncle,  a  more  liberally-minded  man  than 
his  father,  where  he  found  well-educated  cousins,  one  of 
them  going  to  Oxford.  He  could  not  have  neglected 
his  business  very  much,  whatever  his  father  may  have 
thought,  by  his  devotion  to  French  and  Latin,  since 
he  was  chosen  to  be  delegate  to  the  Tanners'  Trade 
Convention  at  London  while  still  a  youth,  and  made  a 
favorable  impression  and  brought  away  one  valuable 
friendship.  It  may  have  been  at  this  time  and  through 
the  advice  of  the  "great  London  tanner,"  Mr.  Purkis, 
that  he  came  under  the  influence  of  French  opinions, 
which  he  imbibed  sufficiently  to  alarm  his  Toryish  cou- 
sins as  well  as  the  country  neighborhood,  by  shaking  the 
powder  out  of  his  hair.  He  was  thought  to  be  a  demo- 
crat, and  the  word  was  at  that  time  and  place  a  thing 
to  shudder  at.  How  it  was  that  he  became  acquainted 
with  Coleridge,  it  is  impossible  to  ascertain.  There  was 
a  tradition  that  the  two  had  met  accidentally  in  a  tav- 
ern, when  the  poet  was  in  the  army  and  Poole  had  meta- 
morphosed himself  into  a  common  workman.  It  seems 
to  be  believed  that  Poole  did  carry  out  that  plan  of 
becoming  thoroughly  versed  in  the  details  of  the  tanning 
trade  and  acquainted  with  the  minds  and  habits  of  the 


THOMAS   POOLE   AND   HIS   FRIENDS          47 

workmen;  but  the  time  of  this  is  uncertain.  It  is  as 
a  possible  adventurer  in  the  Pantisocratic  scheme  that 
we  first  find  him  connected  with  Coleridge.  He  de- 
scribes the  plan  in  a  letter  to  an  inquiring  friend,  and 
this  account  is  the  most  detailed  of  any  yet  published 
about  this  famous  project  of  settlement  on  the  banks  of 
the  Susquehannah: 

"Twelve  gentlemen  of  good  education  and  liberal  principles 
are  to  embark  with  twelve  ladies  in  April  next.  Previous  to 
their  leaving  this  country  they  are  to  have  as  much  inter- 
course as  possible,  in  order  to  ascertain  each  other's  dis- 
positions, and  firmly  to  settle  every  regulation  for  the  gov- 
ernment of  their  future  conduct.  Their  opinion  was  that 
they  should  fix  themselves  at  —  I  do  not  recollect  the  place, 
but  somewhere  in  a  delightful  part  of  the  new  back  settle- 
ments; that  each  man  should  labor  two  or  three  hours  in  a 
day,  the  produce  of  which  labor  would,  they  imagine,  be 
more  than  sufficient  to  support  the  colony.  As  Adam  Smith 
observes  that  there  is  not  above  one  productive  man  in  twenty, 
they  argue  that  if  each  labored  the  twentieth  part  of  the 
time,  it  would  produce  enough  to  satisfy  their  wants.  The 
produce  of  their  industry  is  to  be  laid  up  in  common  for  the 
use  of  all;  and  a  good  library  of  books  is  to  be  collected,  and 
their  leisure  hours  to  be  spent  in  study,  liberal  discussions, 
and  the  education  of  their  children.  A  system  for  the  edu- 
cation of  their  children  is  laid  down,  for  which,  if  this  plan  at 
all  suits  you,  I  must  refer  you  to  the  authors  of  it.  The 
regulations  relating  to  the  females  strike  them  as  the  most 
difficult;  whether  the  marriage  contract  shall  be  dissolved  if 
agreeable  to  one  or  both  parties,  and  many  other  circum- 
stances, are  not  yet  determined.  The  employments  of  the 
women  are  to  be  the  care  of  infant  children  and  other  occu- 
pations suited  to  their  strength,  at  the  same  time  the  greatest 
attention  is  to  be  paid  to  the  cultivation  of  their  minds. 
Every  one  is  to  enjoy  his  own  religious  and  political  opinions, 
provided  they  do  not  encroach  on  the  rules  previously 
made,  which  rules,  it  is  unnecessary  to  add,  must  in  some 


48  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

measure  be  regulated  by  the  laws  of  the  State  which  includes 
the  district  in  which  they  settle." 


Such  was  the  scheme  of  colonization  worked  out  by 
Coleridge  and  Southey,  the  latter  of  whom  Poole  de- 
scribes as  "more  violent  in  his  principles  than  even  Cole- 
ridge himself";  and  he  adds:  "In  Religion,  shocking  to 
say  in  a  mere  Boy  as  he  is,  I  fear  he  wavers  between 
Deism  and  Atheism."  The  cost  to  each  undertaker  was 
to  be  £125.  But  Poole,  who  was  at  this  time  twenty-nine 
years  old,  accompanied  this  information  with  very  sound 
considerations  as  to  the  chimerical  nature  of  the  project, 
which  is  now  interesting  partly  as  an  example  of  the 
French  ferment,  but  mainly  as  a  literary  curiosity. 

The  lifelong  friendship  of  Poole  and  Coleridge  began 
some  months  later,  in  the  summer  of  1794.  The  actual 
day  when  Coleridge  and  Southey  visited  him  was  long 
remembered  in  the  neighborhood  as  that  on  which  the 
news  of  the  death  of  Robespierre  reached  the  place. 
Poole  was  already  a  suspected  democrat,  and  had  been 
warned  that  the  Government  had  an  eye  on  his  private 
correspondence,  but  he  made  light  of  it.  The  violent 
expressions  of  his  two  companions  on  this  occasion  were 
scandalous.  It  is  reported  that,  Tom's  cousin  (the  tall, 
fair-complexioned  Oxford  don)  being  present,  one  of 
them  had  said  that  "Robespierre  was  a  ministering  angel 
of  mercy,  sent  to  slay  thousands  that  he  might  save 
millions";  and  Southey  in  particular  laid  his  head  down 
upon  his  arms  and  exclaimed,  "I  had  rather  have  heard 
of  the  death  of  my  own  father!"  But  one  must  not  rely 
on  phrases  handed  down  by  tradition.  It  is  certain 
that  people  were  very  much  shocked,  and  in  particular 
the  fair-complexioned  don,  with  powdered  locks  and 


THOMAS   POOLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS          49 

precise  attire,  who  recorded  the  occurrence,  but  not  the 
words,  in  his  Latin  diary.  "Uterque"  he  writes,  "vero 
rabie  Democratica  quoad  Politiam;  et  Infidelis  quoad 
Religionem  spectat,  turpiter  jervet.  Ego  maxime  indig- 
nor" ;  and  after  a  few  words  more  he  concludes,  "sed 
de  talibus  satis."  The  sisters  of  the  Latinist,  who  was  a 
most  admirable  man,  were  similarly  indignant  at  "Cousin 
Tom"  for  entertaining  such  friends;  and  the  situation 
was  not  improved  when  Coleridge,  in  the  beginning  of 
1797,  the  friendship  with  Poole  having  now  strengthened 
and  become  most  intimate,  came  to  live  in  Stowey, 
where  he  passed  what  must  have  been  the  most  agree- 
able year  of  his  life.  It  was  here  that  he  com- 
posed the  "Ancient  Mariner."  To  the  young  lady 
cousins  the  poet,  "with  the  brow  of  an  angel  and  the 
mouth  of  a  beast,"  as  he  describes  himself,  was  only  a 
bugbear,  and  he  received  from  them  scant  respect;  but 
perhaps,  as  the  biographer  suggests,  Mrs.  Coleridge  and 
the  baby  helped  to  reconcile  him  with  the  humbler 
neighbors.  It  was  different  when  Wordsworth  and  his 
sister,  with  the  young  child  for  which  they  were  caring, 
took  the  Alfoxden  House  near  by,  also  with  Poole's  aid 
and  counsel.  Stories  were  rife  about  them  at  once:  "the 
profound  seclusion  in  which  they  lived,  the  incompre- 
hensible nature  of  their  occupations,  their  strange  habit 
of  frequenting  out-of-the-way  and  untrodden  spots,  the 
very  presence  of  an  unexplained  child  that  was  no  rela- 
tion to  either  of  them"  —  such  are  the  reasons  assigned 
for  that  cloud  of  distrust  which  gathered  about  the  poet 
and  his  sister.  It  was  now  that  the  Government  spy 
was  sent  to  watch  them,  and  they  were  warned  to  leave 
at  the  expiration  of  their  year's  lease,  by  the  direction  of 
the  lady,  Mrs.  St.  Albyn,  who  owned  the  estates.  It  was 


50  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

to  no  purpose,  apparently,  that  Poole  wrote  to  her  a  full 
explanation  of  the  circumstances,  and  assured  her  of 
Wordsworth's  character.  Matters  reached  their  pitch, 
however,  when  Thelwall  came  to  visit  Coleridge,  and, 
tired  of  a  life  of  persecution,  also  wished  to  settle  in 
this  favored  locality.  This  was  clearly  impossible,  and 
Coleridge  wrote  to  remind  him  that  Poole  could  not  be 
asked  to  jeopardize  further  his  reputation  in  the  country 
side. 

The  disturbed  mind  of  the  neighborhood,  in  view  of 
the  presence  among  them  of  a  nest  of  democrats  hatching 
they  knew  not  what,  was  a  passing  matter.  To  Poole 
himself  the  companionship  of  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth 
meant  an  invigoration  of  his  intellectual  life  which  must 
have  been  a  stimulus  of  no  ordinary  force.  At  the  same 
time  his  practical  sagacity  was  never  once  at  fault. 
From  the  beginning  the  character  of  Coleridge  declares 
itself  as  it  is  now  well  known,  with  all  its  excitability  and 
impulsiveness,  and  that  half-frantic  weakness  which 
marks  so  much  of  his  correspondence.  Some  of  these 
new  letters  would  be  incredible  were  it  not  that,  unfortu- 
nately, there  are  too  many  others  like  them.  Poole, 
however,  discharged  well  his  duty  as  the  friend  whom 
Coleridge  always  regarded  as  nearest  and  most  faithful. 
He  was  constantly  serviceable.  It  was  he  who  devised 
the  gift  which  was  to  be  made  annually  from  the  pro- 
ceeds of  £25  contributions  by  Coleridge's  friends. 
Doubtless  he  had  much  to  do  with  obtaining  the  Wedg- 
wood annuity  of  £150,  which  at  the  time  seemed  to 
insure  a  life  undisturbed  by  financial  anxieties;  and  in 
lesser  matters  he  was  not  less  active.  On  the  other 
hand,  Coleridge  explains  the  nature  of  the  bond  which 
united  them  very  plainly:  "I  used  to  feel  myself  more 


I  THOMAS   POOLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  51 

at  home,"  he  says,  "in  his  great  windy  parlor  than  in 
my  own  cottage.  We  were  well  suited  to  each  other  — 
my  animal  spirits  corrected  his  inclination  to  melan- 
choly; and  there  was  something,  both  in  his  understand- 
ing and  in  his  affections,  so  healthy  and  manly  that  my 
mind  freshened  in  his  company,  and  my  ideas  and  habits 
of  thinking  acquired,  day  after  day,  more  of  substance 
and  reality."  As  time  went  on,  Poole,  without  lessen- 
ing his  admiration  for  his  friend's  abilities,  saw  more 
plainly  the  grave  nature  of  his  defects.  He  followed 
him  with  good  wishes  and  high  hopes  on  his  German 
tour,  but  the  winter  in  Malta  and  the  months  after 
Coleridge's  return  must  have  sealed  his  judgment  that 
nothing  of  fulfilment  of  the  expectations  of  Coleridge's 
genius  was  now  to  be  looked  for.  He  was  never  slow 
to  give  him  advice,  and  it  was  always  sagacious;  but 
advice  was  the  last  thing  that  Coleridge  wanted.  Poole 
did  not  believe  that  Coleridge's  ills  were  real.  It  is 
perfectly  plain  that  in  the  years  during  which  Coleridge 
suffered  physically,  and  was  making  attempts  to  regain 
health  by  this  and  that  project  of  travel,  Poole  regarded 
him  as  hypochondriacal,  and  told  him  so  plainly  enough, 
if  not  in  so  many  words.  This  probably  occasioned  in 
part  the  disagreement,  the  coolness,  in  fact,  which  arose 
between  them  at  one  time,  and  which  is  the  blot  on  their 
friendship.  Coleridge  resented  the  opinion  that  his  ail- 
ment sprang  from  mental  rather  than  physical  causes; 
and,  when  an  incident  occurred  to  acerbate  this  feeling, 
he  broke  out  in  a  manner  which  Poole  rightly  regarded 
as  "outrageous."  Wordsworth  had  written  to  Poole,  de- 
tailing Coleridge's  situation,  and  asking  if  he  could  not 
provide  £100,  for  him  to  go  to  the  Azores.  Poole  re- 
plied to  Coleridge  directly,  and  excused  himself,  saying 


52  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

he  was  ready  to  contribute  £20;  and  he  concluded  in  the 
old  strain:  "Coleridge —  God,  I  hope,  will  preserve  you. 
It  seems  to  me  impossible  to  imagine  that  you  would  not 
be  well  if  you  could  have  a  mind  freely  at  ease.  Make 
yourself  that  mind.  Take  from  it  —  its  two  weak  parts 
—  its  tendency  to  restlessness  and  its  tendency  to  torpor, 
and  it  would  make  you  great  and  happy.  It  would  in 
a  moment  see  what  is  right,  and  it  would  possess  the 
power,  and  that  steadily,  to  execute  it."  Poole  was  a 
man  with  many  calls  upon  his  purse,  for  his  benevolence 
was  marked,  and  at  the  time  his  affairs,  as  Coleridge 
knew,  were  in  an  unfavorable  state;  Coleridge,  too,  was 
then  owing  him  £37.  Yet  Coleridge  so  far  forgot  himself 
as  to  remind  Poole  of  the  difference  in  their  education, 
and  to  impute  to  him  an  illiberal  spirit  arising  from  his 
regard  for  money.  "It  is  impossible  that  you  should 
feel,"  he  says,  "as  to  pecuniary  affairs,  as  Wordsworth 
or  as  I  feel  —  or  even  as  men  greatly  inferior  to  you  in 
all  other  things  that  make  man  a  noble  being.  But  this 
I  always  knew  and  calculated  upon,  and  have  applied  to 
you  in  my  little  difficulties  when  I  could  have  procured 
the  sums  with  far  less  pain  to  myself  from  persons  less 
dear  to  me,  only  that  I  might  not  estrange  you  wholly 
from  the  outward  and  visible  realities  of  my  existence, 
my  wants  and  sufferings";  and  he  ends  with,  "Let  us 
for  the  future  abstain  from  all  pecuniary  matters."  He 
followed  up  this  letter  by  others  in  the  same  strain,  and 
refused  to  see  anything  "outrageous"  in  these  remarks. 
The  friendship  survived  the  strain,  much  to  Poole 's 
credit;  but  the  correspondence  grew  less  constant,  and 
finally  ceased,  except  for  a  yearly  bulletin  from  Mrs. 
Coleridge  until  her  death.  Poole  continued,  however, 
to  be  serviceable  to  the  family,  assisted  Hartley  through 


THOMAS   POOLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS          53 

college,  and  was  always  ready  to  fulfill  his  early  promises 
of  help.  It  is  clear  enough,  it  is  pleasant  to  add,  that 
Coleridge  felt  that  Poole  had  really  been  his  friend  of 
friends,  and  that  Poole  on  his  side  retained  undiminished, 
however  he  might  regret  Coleridge's  fate,  his  old  affec- 
tion for  him. 

We  have  left  but  scanty  space  for  the  record  of  Poole's 
own  life,  which  might  well  be  thought  better  worth  de- 
tailing than  the  history  of  that  friendship  to  which  prob- 
ably he  owes  his  memoir.  He  was,  as  the  biographer 
reminds  us,  a  typical  example  of  those  Englishmen  of 
his  time  who  desired  to  make  the  most  of  themselves  and 
live  useful  lives.  He  was,  to  begin  with,  fond  of  making 
and  adopting  improvements  in  his  own  business,  which 
he  conducted  successfully  until  he  retired  from  it,  and 
at  the  same  time  he  cultivated  a  large  farm.  In  public 
affairs  he  had  shown  while  still  young  a  special  interest 
in  the  condition  of  the  working  classes.  The  food  riots, 
occasioned  by  the  war,  brought  the  subject  very  vividly 
to  his  attention,  and  he  was  directly  engaged  in  the 
work  of  relief.  We  find  him  experimenting  in  ways  of 
making  cheap  bread  and  in  methods  of  planting  wheat, 
and  in  later  years  deeply  interested  in  the  introduction 
of  merino  sheep  into  England.  He  built  the  village 
school,  taught  in  it,  and  was  eager  to  forward  popular 
education.  His  cousin,  John  Poole,  the  young  Oxford 
don,  was  the  founder  of  the  Enmore  public  school  and 
a  pioneer  in  the  cause  both  by  practical  teaching  and  by 
means  of  his  pen.  Thomas  Poole  also  founded  the 
Female  Friendly  Society,  for  the  purpose  of  assisting 
women  in  times  of  distress,  and  organized  the  savings 
bank.  In  brief,  there  was,  it  is  said,  no  local  charitable 
institution  that  he  did  not  originate  or  support.  This 


54  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

interest  in  the  condition  of  the  people  was  the  occasion 
of  his  friendship  with  Rickman,  and  consequently  of  his 
only  public  service.  The  two,  after  having  met,  cor- 
responded on  the  subject  of  the  Poor-Laws;  and,  an 
inquiry  being  shortly  after  authorized  by  Parliament, 
Rickman  persuaded  Poole  to  give  some  months  of  his 
time  to  the  task  of  receiving  and  tabulating  the  returns. 
In  this  way,  living  in  London,  he  was  brought  in  useful 
contact  with  many  public  men. 

His  interest  in  politics,  both  foreign  and  domestic, 
never  ceased  to  be  keen,  and  although  his  early  opinions, 
which  do  not  seem  to  have  been  extreme,  were  modified 
with  the  course  of  years,  he  was  at  heart  and  in  practise 
a  reformer  to  the  end.  He  was  enlisted  with  Clarkson 
against  the  slave  trade,  and  was  one  of  those  men  who 
would  use  no  sugar  because  it  was  raised  by  slave  labor. 
Whenever  one  comes  on  the  public  questions  of  that  day 
in  these  pages,  Poole  is  found  to  be  not  only  on  the 
right  side,  but  thoroughly  in  earnest  and  laborious  in 
the  work.  It  was  natural  that  he  should  end  his  life 
as  the  leading  and  most  respected  man  in  his  community, 
the  adviser  in  all  local  affairs,  and  the  friend  and  "com- 
mon peacemaker,"  as  he  was  called,  of  his  neighbor- 
hood. His  self-training  intellectually,  united  with  a 
capacity  for  fellowship,  had  made  him  the  companion 
of  many  notable  persons.  He  spoke  French,  and  during 
his  travels  on  the  Continent  in  the  year  of  the  peace,  he 
had  the  fortune  to  meet  several  of  the  distinguished 
men  of  the  time;  but  such  associations  had  not  changed 
his  original  nature.  He  always  affected  a  certain  rus- 
ticity of  manner;  his  voice  was  loud  and  disagreeable, 
made  harsh  by  the  constant  use  of  snuff;  there  was  a 
rough  quality  in  him.  When  he  was  a  county  magis- 


THOMAS   POOLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS          55 

trate  and  coming  to  the  end  of  life,  he  would  proclaim, 
in  what  is  styled  an  uncompromising  tone,  "For  my  part, 
I  am  a  plebeian.  I  am  a  tanner,  you  know,  I  am  a 
tanner."  Southey  speaks  of  him  as  "clod-hopping  over 
my  feelings";  but  in  a  more  amiable  moment  he  also 
says,  "Tom  Poole  is  not  content  to  be  your  friend;  he 
must  be  your  saviour."  It  is  noticeable,  however,  that 
he  had  also  that  gift  of  tenderness  which  sometimes  goes 
with  rough  natures.  He  was  an  excellent  nurse,  and 
was  quick  to  come  in  all  times  of  domestic  trouble  and 
bereavement,  and  no  one  was  more  welcome.  In  his 
drawer,  after  his  death,  was  found  among  his  memen- 
toes a  small  packet  labeled,  "The  hair  of  my  poor  shep- 
herd, who  served  me  faithfully  for  twenty-three  years"; 
it  is  a  trifling  thing,  but  nothing  could  be  more  signifi- 
cant. He  never  married,  and  he  outlived  several  of  his 
best  friends,  especially  Coleridge,  Davy,  and  Tom 
Wedgwood;  but  his  home  was  a  center  of  cheerfulness, 
and  he  was  surrounded  in  his  later  years  by  young  people 
who  had  experienced  his  perpetual  kindness.  He  left 
no  great  thing  behind  him  to  preserve  his  memory  —  he 
was  a  man  of  his  generation  only;  but  at  the  end  of 
these  volumes  the  reader  finds  himself  of  one  mind  with 
those  of  his  friends  of  whom  Coleridge  in  his  character  of 
Poole  says,  "Not  a  man  among  them  but  would  vote 
for  leaving  him  as  he  is."  It  is  not  often  that  an  humble 
life,  with  so  much  of  the  substance  of  virtue  in  it,  gets 
itself  written. 


THE  DE  QUINCEY   FAMILY 

DR.  JAPP  is  the  apologist  of  De  Quincey.  The  par- 
ticular attack  is  the  doubt  of  De  Quincey 's  veracity  in 
the  autobiographic  details  which  he  wove  into  his  works. 
Some  question  of  the  Opium-Eater's  truthfulness  was 
early  expressed,  and  Mr.  George  Saintsbury  printed  sus- 
picions of  the  same  sort  which  lost  none  of  their  vexa- 
tiousness  coming  from  his  pen.  Mainly  in  consequence  of 
this  critic's  remarks,  if  one  may  judge  from  the  constant 
reference  to  them,  Dr.  Japp  and  the  representatives 
of  De  Quincey  published  the  family  correspondence. 
The  exposure  of  private  affairs,  nine-tenths  of  which 
have  no  interest  whatever  to  outsiders,  is  complete. 
The  interior  arrangements,  both  domestic  and  financial, 
are  laid  open,  and  in  the  letters  of  De  Quincey's 
mother,  two  sisters,  and  two  brothers  every  one  is  made 
welcome  to  a  not  very  edifying  story. 

The  family  was  not  a  happy  one.  The  mother  was 
unable,  apparently,  to  win  the  affection  of  the  children, 
and  they  on  their  side  were  impatient  of  her  discipline. 
Mrs.  De  Quincey  was  a  woman  of  much  formal  propri- 
ety, attached  to  the  Clapham  sect  in  religious  and  moral 
sympathy.  De  Quincey  himself  draws  a  vivid  picture 
of  her  as  he  remembers  the  impression  she  made  on  him 
in  early  years: 

"Figure  to  yourself  a  woman  of  admirable  manners,  in 
fact  as  much  as  any  person  I  have  ever  known  distinguished 
by  ladylike  tranquility  and  repose,  and  even  by  self-posses- 

57 


58  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

sion,  but  also  freezing  in  excess.  Austere  she  was  to  a  degree 
which  fitted  her  for  the  lady-president  of  rebellious  nunneries. 
Rigid  in  her  exactions  of  duty  from  those  around  her,  but 
also  firm  herself;  upright,  sternly  conscientious,  munificent 
in  her  charities,  pure-minded  in  so  absolute  a  degree  that 
you  would  have  been  tempted  to  call  her  'holy7  —  she  yet 
could  not  win  hearts  by  the  graciousness  of  her  manner.  .  .  . 
It  is  as  good  as  a  comedy  in  my  feeling  when  I  call  back 
the  characteristic  scene  which  went  on  every  morning  of  the 
year.  All  of  us,  for  some  years  six,  were  marched  off  or 
carried  off  to  a  morning  parade  in  my  mother's  dressing-room. 
As  the  mailcoaches  go  down  daily  in  London  to  the  inspector 
of  mails,  so  we  rolled  out  of  the  nursery  at  a  signal  given, 
and  were  minutely  reviewed  in  succession.  Were  the  lamps 
of  our  equipage  clean  and  bright?  Were  the  springs  properly 
braced?  Were  the  linchpins  secured?  When  this  inspection, 
which  was  no  mere  formality,  had  traveled  from  the  front 
rank  to  the  rear,  when  we  were  pronounced  to  be  in  proper 
trim,  or,  in  the  language  of  the  guard,  'all  right  behind,'  we 
were  dismissed,  but  with  two  ceremonies  that  to  us  were  mys- 
terious and  allegorical —  first,  that  our  hair  and  faces  were 
sprinkled  with  lavender  water  and  milk  of  roses;  secondly, 
that  we  received  a  kiss  on  the  forehead." 

It  is  not  to  a  son's  credit  to  write  thus  of  his  mother; 
but  the  tone  shows  plainly  the  absence  of  any  warmth 
of  feeling,  a  perfect  coldness  and  apathy  of  filial  affec- 
tion. It  is  added  that  Mrs.  De  Quincey  taught  her 
children  to  undervalue  themselves  so  that,  says  De  Quin- 
cey, "we  held  it  a  point  of  filial  duty  to  believe  ourselves 
the  very  scum  and  refuse  of  the  universe."  And,  to 
add  the  last  anecdote  that  fills  out  this  unfavorable  pic- 
ture, it  is  related  that  a  servant,  on  being  asked  why  she 
did  not  appeal  to  the  mistress,  replied:  "Speak  to  mis- 
tress! would  I  speak  to  a  ghost?" 

Notwithstanding  all  this,  it  is  plain  enough  that  Mrs. 
De  Quincey  was  a  mother  devoted  to  the  welfare  of  her 


THE   DE  QUINCEY   FAMILY  59 

children.  She  had  the  disadvantage  of  having  guard- 
ians associated  with  her,  one  of  whom,  Dr.  Hall,  was 
certainly  a  most  unfortunate  choice.  Mrs.  Baird  Smith, 
one  of  De  Quincey's  daughters,  thinks  that  she  was  self- 
distrustful  and  sought  advice  from  her  friends,  the  Clap- 
ham  people,  and  that  the  children  felt  this  interference 
of  strangers  as  a  bar  between  them  and  their  mother. 
Whatever  was  the  reason,  the  result  was  that  both 
Thomas  and  Richard  ran  away  and  suffered  much  hard- 
ship, and  none  of  the  others  exhibit  any  attachment  to 
the  mother.  On  her  side,  however,  we  think  none  can 
read  her  letters  without  being  impressed  by  her  excellent 
qualities,  and  in  particular,  in  later  years,  by  her  willing- 
ness to  assist  De  Quincey  and  the  rest  to  the  utmost 
of  her  means.  From  the  time  he  went  to  Oxford  her 
purse  was  used  for  him,  and  after  he  had  wasted  his 
inheritance  she  gave  him  continually  from  her  funds  as 
much  as  was  possible,  though  she  insisted,  with  good 
sense,  on  keeping  the  capital  intact  and  settling  it  on 
the  grandchildren.  She  certainly  lacked  tact  in  appeal- 
ing to  the  children,  and  she  spoke  her  mind  freely  about 
their  faults,  but  not  so  harshly  but  that  a  grown  per- 
son, making  allowance  for  her  religious  belief,  strongly 
colored  with  evangelicalism  as  it  was,  should  have  seen 
and  honored  the  motives  and  feelings  which  prompted 
such  criticism.  Here  is  as  unfavorable  a  passage  as  can 
be  quoted,  written  on  hearing  and  too  readily  believing 
that  the  education  of  De  Quincey's  daughters  was  be- 
ing neglected.  She  offers  to  pay  the  school  bills,  and  then 
goes  on  as  follows: 

"I  have  long  been  too  certain  that  you  were  bringing  up 
your  sons  in  idleness,  but  hoping  they  were  to  be  made 
scholars  and  their  minds  taught  to  work,  I  supposed  they 


6o  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

would  be  kept  from  falling  necessarily  into  profligacy,  and 
live  by  literature,  but  I  know  not  where  or  what  now  to 
hope;  and,  O  my  son,  if  they  are  all  brought  up  in  idle 
ignorance,  what  but  the  worst  can  be  expected?  I  am  sure 
of  this,  that  a  Parent  with  your  means  who  does  this  is 
utterly  unworthy  of  children;  but  still  in  the  present  time 
where  must  the  wages  of  this  bad  work  fall  the  heaviest?  In 
this  time,  bad  as  it  is  in  many  points,  to  bring  up  girls  in  idle 
ignorance  is  only  to  make  them  victims,  not  prepared  to  take 
their  place  among  industrious  people  laboring  for  bread,  yet 
too  ignorant  to  be  received  elsewhere!  I  cannot  express  my 
feelings  as  I  ought;  I  can  only  proffer  my  help;  and  if  you 
can  possibly  be  angry  to  hear  the  truth,  I  too  well  remember 
what  you  said  touching  my  respect  for  the  lowly  virtues  to 
be  surprised,  though  not  shaken  in  my  well-assured  con- 


This  is  an  extreme  instance  of  fault-finding,  and  there 
is  nothing  in  it  that  any  one  can  object  to,  except  the 
readiness  to  believe  that  De  Quincey  was  so  derelict  in 
his  parental  duty;  and  it  is  allowed  that  as  respects  the 
girls  there  was  some  color  for  the  censure.  Perhaps 
another  passage  is  not  amiss  as  representing  his  mother's 
tone  in  his  boyhood.  She  writes  to  him  at  the  Man- 
chester Grammar  School  as  follows: 

"I  plainly  perceive  that  you  have  exalted  one,  and  that 
the  most  dangerous  faculty  of  the  mind,  the  imagination, 
over  all  the  rest;  but  it  will  desolate  your  life  and  hopes,  if 
it  be  not  restrained  and  brought  under  religious  government; 
it  may  then  be  turned  to  the  use  it  was  assuredly  given  for, 
in  the  pursuit  of  any  profession,  and  be  nobly  used  in  the 
service  of  your  Maker.  In  a  worldly  sense,  without  you 
bring  this  busy,  restless  power  into  submission  to  reason  and 
judgment,  you  are  undone;  you  are  now  carried  away,  wholly 
blinded  by  the  bewildering  light  of  your  fancy,  and  that 
you  may  never  see  clearer  your  reading  is  all  of  a  sort  to 
weaken  your  mental  optics. " 


THE   DE  QUINCEY   FAMILY  61 

These  passages  serve  for  illustration  of  Mrs.  De 
Quincey's  character  and  temperament,  but  they  really  do 
injustice  to  her  since  they  do  not  disclose  the  continual 
anxiety  she  felt  for  her  children,  and  her  serviceableness 
to  them  practically  after  they  grew  up.  She  repelled 
them  by  her  principles,  too  narrowly  held  and  too  rigidly 
enforced;  she  did  not  win  their  trust,  and  appeal  to  her 
against  what  they  thought  wrong  in  their  school-life  ap- 
pears not  merely  to  have  been  useless,  but  to  have 
brought  only  her  strongly  expressed  displeasure  on  them 
as  unruly  and  disobedient.  And  these  errors  of  con- 
duct cost  her  their  affection.  It  was  a  full  price  to  pay, 
and  justice  may  now  be  done  to  her  more  admirable 
traits  of  fidelity,  self-sacrifice,  and  devotion  to  her  par- 
ental duty. 

Richard  was  the  child  who  suffered  most  from  the 
defects  in  his  guardianship.  He  ran  away  from  school 
because  he  was  flogged,  and,  on  being  returned  and 
flogged  for  this  offense,  he  ran  away  a  second  time, 
joined  a  merchant  ship  as  cabin  boy,  was  captured  by 
pirates  on  the  South  American  coast,  escaped  and  made 
one  of  the  storming  party  at  Montevideo,  and  so  dis- 
tinguished himself  that  he  was  at  once  rated  a  midship- 
man by  the  English  admiral.  He  was  in  the  action  at 
Copenhagen,  taken  prisoner  by  the  Danes,  and  after- 
wards exchanged,  on  which  occasion  he  made  himself 
known  to  his  family.  They  questioned  his  identity  at 
first,  as  he  refused  to  meet  them  personally,  but  he 
afterwards  satisfied  their  doubts,  and  was  in  pleasant 
intercourse  with  them  till  he  met  an  early  and  unknown 
death  in  Jamaica  on  a  hunting  excursion.  He  was  twice 
in  England  during  his  wanderings  and  was  in  want,  but 
he  so  feared  his  guardians  that  he  kept  himself  obscure; 


62  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

nor  did  he  finally  disclose  himself  till  he  was  safely  past 
twenty-one  years  of  age.  This  persistence  of  Richard  in 
what  must  have  been  a  hard  and  unwelcome  life  is  the 
strongest  proof  of  the  severity  and  lack  of  sympathy  he 
felt  in  his  natural  friends,  and,  indeed,  his  feelings 
towards  his  guardians  must  have  amounted  to  hatred. 
In  his  letters  he  shows  a  pleasant  disposition  and  the 
intellectual  tastes  which  characterized  the  family,  and 
he  is  altogether  the  most  attractive  of  them.  The  letters 
of  the  sisters  are  not  of  any  special  interest  except  as 
they  carry  on  the  family  story;  and  Henry,  the  last 
brother,  seems  to  have  been  rather  a  weakling. 

The  literary  part  of  the  Memorials  is  considerable  in 
bulk  and  separable  from  the  family  portion.  Its  prin- 
ciple feature  is  the  collection  of  letters  from  Dorothy 
Wordsworth  to  De  Quincey.  These  are  admirable,  and 
sufficient  in  charm  and  interest  to  give  the  volumes 
permanent  value  in  literature.  They  describe,  in  the 
rapid,  natural,  and  feminine  way  that  belonged  to  their 
author's  pen,  the  interior  of  the  Wordsworth  household; 
and  as  De  Quincey  was  especially  interested  in  the  chil- 
dren, they  are  full  of  anecdotes  and  news  about  the  little 
ones,  who  were  as  fond  of  De  Quincey  as  he  of  them. 
Nothing,  perhaps,  is  more  childishly  delightful  than 
" Johnny's"  interpolation  into  his  evening  prayer  for  his 
"good  friends"  —  "Mr.  De  Quincey  is  one  of  my 
friends";  but  there  are  several  incidents  of  the  sort. 
There  is,  of  course,  much  besides  the  children's  affairs  — 
about  the  De  Quincey  cottage,  then  in  the  furnishing,  the 
Green  family  lost  in  the  snow,  the  doings  of  Coleridge, 
Wordsworth's  verse-writing,  Jeffrey's  reviews,  and  es- 
pecially the  Convention  of  Cintra  pamphlet  which  De 
Quincey  was  seeing  through  the  press.  Wordsworth 


THE   DE  QUINCEY    FAMILY  63 

was  somewhat  apprehensive  of  being  prosecuted  for  this 
publication,  and  Dorothy  writes: 

"William  still  continues  to  haunt  himself  with  fancies 
about  Newgate  and  Dorchester  or  some  other  gaol,  but  as 
his  mind  clings  to  the  gloomy,  Newgate  is  his  favorite  theme. 
We,  however,  have  no  fears;  for  even  if  the  words  be  action- 
able (which  I  cannot  but  think  they  are  not),  in  these  times 
they  would  not  dare  inflict  such  a  punishment." 

We  should  mention  also  two  admirable  letters  of 
Wordsworth  to  De  Quincey  before  meeting  him,  very 
characteristic  and  kind,  and  a  letter  of  Coleridge  to 
De  Quincey  when  the  latter  asked  repayment  of  some 
loans,  in  which  Coleridge  appears  to  advantage  in  the 
sincere  expression  of  feelings  honorable  to  him.  The 
correspondence  with  Professor  Wilson  sheds  light  upon 
the  financial  relations  of  De  Quincey  with  himself,  both 
being  borrowers,  and  exhibits  the  former's  indulgence 
and  friendship  under  trying  circumstances.  The  cor- 
respondence of  Lord  Altamont  abundantly  justifies  all 
that  De  Quincey  said  of  his  association  with  the  family, 
and  shows  the  peer's  own  character  in  a  pleasant  light. 

The  net  result  of  this  collection  is  to  sustain  De  Quin- 
cey's  accuracy  of  statement,  and  so  far  to  benefit  his 
reputation.  At  all  points  where  he  is  tested  by  these 
documents  he  is  found  correct.  At  the  same  time,  the 
history  of  the  family  is  so  exhibited  as  to  give  better 
opportunities  for  judging  of  his  position  in  early  life, 
and  of  how  they  discharged  their  obligations  to  him 
after  he  fell  into  misfortune.  It  is  perhaps  well  to  have 
the  subject  cleared  up.  It  does  not  appear  to  us  that, 
all  things  considered,  he  was  illiberally  treated.  He 
took  his  career  into  his  own  hands  with  more  or  less 
excuse,  but  he  did  not  prosper  in  the  undertaking.  As 


64  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

soon  as  he  came  into  his  inheritance,  he  usea  it,  in  part 
generously,  but  altogether  foolishly,  and  soon  it  was 
gone.  He  wrote  a  long  and  minute  history  of  this  worldly 
failure,  and  in  it  he  discusses  his  hopes  and  the  reasons 
of  his  various  decisions.  One  passage  illustrates  his  esti- 
mate of  himself: 

"I  hoped,  and  have  every  year  hoped  with  better  grounds, 
that  (if  I  should  be  blessed  with  life  sufficient)  I  should 
accomplish  a  great  revolution  in  the  intellectual  condition  of 
the  world.  That  I  should,  both  as  one  cause  and  one  effect 
of  that  revolution,  place  education  upon  a  new  footing  through- 
out all  civilized  nations,  was  but  one  part  of  this  revolution; 
it  was  also  but  a  part  (though  it  may  seem  singly  more  than 
enough  for  a  whole)  to  be  the  first  founder  of  true  philosophy; 
and  it  was  no  more  than  a  part  that  I  hoped  to  be  the  re- 
establisher  in  England  (with  great  accessions)  of  mathe- 
matics." 

This  was  apparently  written  in  1818,  in  De  Quincey's 
thirty-third  year.  That  he  formed  such  hopes,  and  re- 
tained them  so  long,  shows  the  lack  of  judgment  with 
respect  to  himself  and  his  own  life  which  characterized 
him.  He  had  already  fallen  under  the  opium  habit.  He 
excused  himself  from  ordinary  labor  in  the  professions 
on  the  ground  of  these  great  aims,  and  the  fact  was  that 
most  of  what  he  really  accomplished  was  piecemeal  work 
done  for  the  magazines  to  get  money.  His  mother  had 
about  £13,000,  which  she  determined  to  hand  down  to 
her  grandchildren,  i.  e.,  De  Quincey's  children,  but  she 
assisted  him  out  of  the  income;  and  in  this  her  decision 
must  commend  itself  to  a  practical  mind.  His  uncle  in 
India  also  assisted  him  at  times,  but,  after  his  retire- 
ment on  a  reduced  allowance  of  perhaps  £700  a  year, 
seems  to  have  found  that  sum  no  more  than  sufficient  for 


THE   DE  QUINCEY   FAMILY  65 

his  bachelor  tastes.  It  cannot  be  made  out  that  De 
Quincey  did  not  receive  as  much  from  the  family  estate 
as  was  fairly  to  be  given  to  him.  The  reproach  that 
they  were  indifferent  to  his  welfare  and  practically  de- 
serted him  has  no  foundation  in  the  light  of  these  Mem- 
orials. Altogether,  the  story  seems  more  honorable  to 
his  mother  than  to  himself,  in  substance,  though  she 
cannot  be  wholly  freed  from  responsibility  for  errors 
of  judgment,  and  for  the  cold  demeanor  in  early  days 
which  made  the  youth  of  the  boys  so  unhappy  both  in 
itself  and  in  its  results. 


EDWARD  BULWER,  LORD  LYTTON 

SENTIMENTALITY,  under  some  one  of  its  many  forms, 
is  ever  ready  to  fasten  on  literatures  that  have  become 
polished,  and  on  social  coteries  in  whose  culture  the 
intellectual  mode  has  any  part;  for  there  is  a  fashion 
in  gentlemen's  thoughts  as  in  their  cravats  and  waist- 
coats—  a  ruling  theory,  a  proper  temper  of  mind,  an 
established  canon  of  criticism,  assented  to  like  a  code 
of  manners  as  a  basis  whereon  the  half-savage  but  gre- 
garious animal,  man,  may  safely  converse.  And  just 
as  there  is  one  clique  that  dresses  the  body  stylishly 
for  the  parlor,  there  is  another  that  clothes  the  mind 
conventionally  for  the  dinner  table.  In  London,  during 
the  years  just  before  the  Reform  Bill,  this  species  of 
the  higher  etiquette  was  languishingly  romantic,  as  later 
it  was  languishingly  picturesque;  it  was  then  like  a  mys- 
tery of  the  illuminated,  the  peculiar  faith,  the  bon  ton, 
of  society.  Byron  was  its  high  priest,  Bulwer  its 
neophyte,  and,  to  carry  out  the  figure,  the  young  Dis- 
raeli its  fanatic.  Then  the  gilded  youth  had  each  out- 
lived a  passion,  a  crime,  and  an  ambition,  and  as  ocular 
proof  thereof  wore  the  cast  garments  of  Lara,  the  shoon 
and  scallop-shell  of  Harold;  the  maids,  old  and  young, 
sighed  for  blighted  affections  in  preference  to  happy 
love,  and  after  dinner  became  lachrymose  over  the  songs 
of  Moore  in  the  drawing-room.  Now  that  Gladstone 
governs  where  Melbourne  lolled,  it  seems  a  worm-eaten, 
theatrical  mask,  whose  best  use  in  history  was  to  be  the 

67 


68  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

butt  of  Thackeray's  banter.  "What  sort  of  a  novel 
would  Lady  Caroline  Lamb  perpetrate  to-day?"  one  in- 
voluntarily asks  himself,  as  he  reads  of  her  sickly  flirta- 
tions with  the  young-mannish  Bulwer  who  was  proud 
one  day  to  wear  Byron's  ring,  the  public  gyve  of  her 
lovers  and  chief  sign  of  her  favor,  and  sullen  the  next 
at  finding  the  romance  vapor  away  in  a  fiasco.  In  such 
hothouse  society  the  precocious  novelist  grew  up  and 
tired,  and  early  arrived  at  the  cynicism  that  tempered 
his  worldly  wit,  as  well  as  at  the  knowledge  of  surfaces 
that  gave  waisemblance  and  success  to  "Pelham."  All 
this  —  the  artificiality,  insincerity,  affectation,  not  of 
manners,  but  of  feeling,  in  a  word  the  sentimentality  of 
the  fashionable  coteries  affected  by  literature  —  must 
be  kept  in  mind  in  order  to  understand  Bulwer's  tempta- 
tions, his  brilliant  entrance  on  his  long  career,  and  es- 
pecially the  sterling  qualities  of  his  mind  and  heart. 

His  autobiography,  with  its  supplementary  letters, 
notes,  fragments  of  novels,  begins,  as  is  common  since 
the  discovery  of  the  principle  of  heredity,  at  the  root  of 
the  genealogical  tree.  The  author  had  much  of  the 
pride  of  race,  and  he  has  gathered  some  entertainment 
out  of  his  trunkf ul  of  old  papers ;  but  usually  the  family 
records  are  of  more  interest  to  himself  than  to  his 
readers,  though  all  the  latter,  by  a  curious  lapse  of  his 
son's  pen,  are  styled  "his  posterity."  His  material 
grandfather,  the  omnivorous,  silent  scholar,  who  in  Dr. 
Parr's  opinion  was  the  first  Latinist  of  the  times,  and 
second  only  to  Person  in  Greek  and  to  Sir  William  Jones 
in  Oriental  tongues,  was  really  worth  description;  for 
there  were  strong  traits  and  fine  humorous  contrasts  in 
the  old  bookworm,  who,  indeed,  once  attempted  original- 
ity by  beginning  a  drama  in  Hebrew,  but  abandoned  the 


EDWARD    BULWER,   LORD   LYTTON  69 

muse  in  disgust  because  he  could  not  find  Jews  suffi- 
ciently versed  in  their  own  language  to  act  in  it,  and  at 
last,  wearied  with  buried  lore,  "took  the  daughter  of  the 
vine  to  spouse'7  in  the  shape  of  an  immense  collection 
of  the  Spanish  romances  of  chivalry.  In  the  case  of 
other  ancestors,  and  especially  in  his  mother's  love  af- 
fairs, Bulwer's  own  narrative  is  garrulous  and  in  bad 
taste.  Of  himself  he  says  but  little,  although  he  has 
written  a  good-sized  book  by  the  time  he  reaches  his 
twenty- third  year,  when  the  autobiography  stops. 

One  noticeable  thing  in  this  early  period  is  that  he 
was  brought  up  by  women.  His  father's  death,  when 
he  was  still  a  young  child,  left  him  a  mother's  boy,  and 
her  influence  was  the  greater  over  him  because  he  was 
removed  from  the  company  of  his  two  brothers,  and 
was  never  sent  to  a  public  school.  He  felt  toward  her 
a  deep  and  grateful  affection;  but  some  part  of  his  dis- 
pleasing peculiarities  were  probably  due  to  this  early 
seclusion  from  the  intimate  observation  of  men  and  the 
unrestrained  criticism  of  the  Etonians.  He  was  a  pre- 
cocious child,  but  his  mother  was  not  a  Cornelia.  Obe- 
dience to  parents  was,  in  her  creed,  the  first  command- 
ment —  upon  it,  as  on  a  rock,  two  lovers  and  the  happi- 
ness of  her  life  had  gone  to  pieces;  the  second  was  like 
unto  it  —  regard  for  the  world,  respectability.  Of  her 
mental  caliber  here  is  an  illustration,  and  perhaps  it  is 
also  a  straw  to  show  from  what  quarter  the  wind  blew 
in  the  matter  of  Bulwer's  foppishness:  "The  powdered 
locks;  the  double-breasted  white  waistcoat,  with  the 
muslin  cravat  in  great  bows,  rising  over  a  delicate  pink 
silk  kerchief,  carelessly  folded  to  answer  the  purpose  of 
our  modern  undervest;  the  top-boots,  shrunk  half-way 
down  the  calf;  and  the  broad-brimmed  hat,  set  with 


70  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

easy  impertinence  on  one  side  the  head  —  'that/  said 
my  poor  mother,  after  finishing  her  description,  'that 
is  what  I  call  being  well  dressed!  '  When  Bulwer  was 
advanced  so  far  in  childhood  as  to  ask  this  guardian 
mother,  "Pray,  mamma,  are  you  not  sometimes  over- 
come by  the  sense  of  your  own  identity?"  she  answered, 
"It  is  high  time  you  should  go  to  school,  Teddy";  and, 
consequently,  being  nine  years  old,  he  went  to  Fulham, 
and  was  so  shocked  and  so  homesick  that  he  was  with- 
drawn in  a  fortnight,  and  after  that  was  sent  to  other 
schools,  which  he  left  successively,  as  being  too  clever, 
too  impetuous,  or  what  not,  until  at  one  of  these  hos- 
telries  of  learning  he  had  his  first,  and  it  seems  his  last, 
love  affair.  The  story  is  very  dimly  told:  a  youth  of 
seventeen,  a  girl  slightly  older,  walks  in  the  green  se- 
questered meadows  by  the  Brent,  a  passionate  parting, 
and  then  three  years  of  repulsive  marriage  for  the  girl, 
with  death  at  the  end,  and  for  the  boy  a  touch  of  imagi- 
native melancholy,  growing  deeper  and  tenderer  as  the 
man  found  he  had  missed  wedded  happiness  —  this  is 
all;  but  from  the  frequency  and  the  feeling  with  which 
Bulwer  introduced  the  story  alike  into  his  earliest  and 
latest  novels,  it  was  clearly  one  of  the  marked  and  lasting 
experiences  of  his  life. 

From  school  to  Cambridge  was  only  a  matter  of 
routine;  and  from  Cambridge,  where  he  had  made  a 
mark  as  a  debater  and  poet  beside  Praed  (who  was  then 
to  the  university  what  Byron  was  to  the  world),  he 
naturally  went  to  Paris  and  authorship,  with  an  adven- 
ture in  gypsy  life,  a  flirtation  with  Lady  Caroline,  and 
much  perfumed  correspondence,  half  gallant,  half  lite- 
rary, for  incidents  by  the  way.  He  had  already  pub- 
lished very  early  some  volumes  of  imitative  verse,  and 


EDWARD    BULWER,   LORD   LYTTON  71 

thereby  had  occasioned  a  flattering  exchange  of  letters 
with  Dr.  Parr,  in  one  of  which  that  learned  man  indites 
thus  wondrously  to  the  versifier  of  eighteen:  "Although 
in  our  politics  we  differ  widely,  yet  I  feel  a  pure,  and  I 
had  almost  said  a  holy,  satisfaction  in  contemplating 
the  moral  properties  of  your  mind."  One  queries 
whether  or  not  the  good  old  man  felt  the  same  "holy 
satisfaction"  when  he  read  "Falkland,"  the  first  result  of 
these  "moral  properties"  in  literature.  Pelham  fol- 
lowed, and  laid  the  foundation  of  Bulwer's  fame.  He 
married,  published  three  more  novels,  became  editor  of 
the  "New  Monthly,"  and  returned  to  the  Reform  Parli- 
ament. At  this  point,  in  May  1831,  when  he  was  twenty- 
eight  years  old,  the  present  installment  of  the  work  closes. 
Before  the  reader  has  advanced  far,  he  perceives  that 
the  Earl  of  Lytton  has  invented  a  new  scheme  for  writing 
biography,  and,  if  it  can  be  kept  up  to  a  certain  level 
of  accomplishment,  a  highly  entertaining  one.  In  his 
lifetime  Bulwer  was  thought  to  be  his  own  hero,  and 
with  this  assumption  his  son  so  far  agrees  as  to  assert 
that  he  used  his  own  experiences  very  patently  in 
his  fictions;  but  Bulwer  probably  did  not  foresee  the 
ease  with  which  the  process  could  be  reversed,  and  his 
novels  turned  into  a  biography  by  a  copious  use  of  his 
fragmentary  manuscripts.  This  seems  to  be  the  pur- 
pose of  his  son.  Bulwer  is  set  before  the  world  in  the 
midst  of  the  society  in  which  he  lived,  the  manners  and 
characters  of  it  being  painted  by  his  own  hand,  while  his 
own  part  of  hero  —  Lionel  Hastings,  De  Lindsay,  Glen- 
allan,  Greville  —  when  not  sufficiently  defined  by  itself, 
is  elucidated  by  letters  or  other  ordinary  biographical 
material.  In  this  way  the  work  gains  merely  as  a  story 
through  Bulwer's  really  fine  literary  faculty;  and  he  him- 


72  LITERARY  MEMOIRS 

self  gains  as  a  man  through  the  judicious  and  timely  dis- 
closures and  comments  of  his  son.  He  remains  the  witty 
and  brilliant  man  of  the  world,  as  he  expressed  himself 
in  his  characters,  and  he  becomes  in  addition  a  more 
estimable  man  than  he  has  been  hitherto  regarded.  His 
conduct  toward  his  mother,  who  violently  opposed  his 
marriage,  and  entirely  broke  with  him  on  account  of  it, 
thereby  depriving  him  of  her  pecuniary  resources,  on 
which  he  was  practically  dependent,  was  highly  honorable. 
He  engaged  himself  because  he  thought  his  future  wife's 
affections  too  deeply  interested  to  be  rejected,  and  he 
married  with  a  full  knowledge  of  the  distressing  circum- 
stances of  alienation  from  his  mother  and  of  limited 
means  in  his  household  which  would  supervene;  after  he 
had  thus  done  what  he  thought  was  his  duty  —  for  his 
passions  were  apparently  not  strongly  aroused  —  he  left 
no  manly  means  untried  to  obtain  reconciliation;  and 
when  that  was  at  last  arranged,  he  refused  for  a  long 
time  the  money  which  his  mother  would  have  allowed 
him,  because  he  felt  that  such  an  obligation  was  sub- 
ject to  misconception.  Throughout  the  affair  the  con- 
sideration of  loss  or  gain  of  property  seems  not  to  have 
weighed  in  his  mind.  He  gains,  too,  by  the  mere  rev- 
elation of  the  industry  with  which,  as  his  biographer 
puts  it,  he  fed  the  waters  of  oblivion  through  many  ob- 
scure channels.  Incessant  labor,  downright  hard  work, 
was  involved  in  composing  the  hundreds  of  anonymous 
articles,  by  means  of  which  he  made  enough  money  to 
pay  his  way,  while  still  much  under  thirty,  and  living 
at  such  a  high  rate  that  the  income  of  the  four  thousand 
pounds  he  owned  was  but  a  slight  help.  He  had  always 
been  diligent;  his  boyish  note-books  show  an  active  and 
wide  curiosity  about  institutions,  politics,  and  history, 


EDWARD    BULWER,   LORD   LYTTON  73 

as  well  as  society.  Something  of  his  grandfather's 
polyglot  spirit  had  descended  on  him,  for  what  his  son 
says  is  quite  true:  "Certainly  no  other  novelist  of  my 
father's  own  age  and  country  has  bestowed  upon  the  en- 
richment and  elevation  of  his  art  anything  like  the  same 
opulence  of  literary  knowledge."  The  novels  themselves 
are  not  better  than  those  of  his  contemporaries  on  this 
account,  but  the  man  himself  is  more  highly  accredited. 
One  is  glad  that  Thackeray  withdrew  with  frank  apology 
his  satire  in  "Eraser's,"  as  being  written  under  an  errone- 
ous idea  of  the  author's  character. 

Unfortunately,  Bulwer's  defects  were  those  most  easily 
perceived  and  most  exposed  to  the  ridicule  of  sensible 
men;  and,  besides,  his  youthful  judgment  was  always 
good.  He  himself,  in  later  days,  suppressed  "Falkland" 
as  liable  to  have  an  immoral  tendency,  while  still  dis- 
avowing any  immoral  motive  in  its  composition.  "Paul 
Clifford,"  it  seems,  was  meant  to  help  on  reform  in  the 
penal  code  and  in  prison  discipline.  "Pelham"  was  mainly 
satirical,  and  intended  to  work  against  the  Byronic  ideal. 
Such  assertions  will  surprise  some  readers,  for  certainly 
it  is  not  any  ethical  purpose  that  gives  life  to  his  novels; 
but  (to  confine  our  remarks  to  "Pelham")  the  precocious 
knowledge  of  the  world,  the  wit,  the  cynicism  of  the  first 
disillusionment  —  this  is  the  secret  of  their  attraction. 
It  is,  perhaps,  more  pleasing  to  learn  of  the  moral  aim 
of  an  author  when  it  would  not  be  easily  discovered 
except  by  himself.  Bulwer  plainly  considered  that  he 
did  something  of  consequence  in  rendering  antiquated 
the  sentimental  fashion  then  prevalent,  of  which  we  have 
said  he  was  the  neophyte.  As  sometimes  happens,  the 
neophyte  apostatized.  He  could  not,  however,  quite  free 
himself  from  the  taint  of  the  school  in  which  he  was 


74  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

bred,  as  easily  recognizable  in  these  fresh,  youthful 
manuscripts  as  in  the  novels  of  his  first  period.  One 
of  these  fragments,  "De  Lindsay,"  was  printed  years  ago, 
in  1832,  in  "The  Ambitious  Student,"  a  fact  of  which  the 
Earl  of  Lytton  seems  ignorant;  at  least,  he  publishes 
it  as  if  for  the  first  time.  In  themselves  these  literary 
remains  add  nothing,  of  course,  to  Bulwer's  accomplish- 
ment; the  libraries  will  have  more  of  the  same  old 
piece,  that  is  all.  Nor,  however  much  more  highly 
Bulwer's  character  is  rated  for  sense,  manliness,  intellec- 
tual vigor,  and  moral  purpose,  can  it  be  granted  that  his 
early  novels  are  substantially  excellent.  Even  by  their 
satire,  by  their  very  repulsion  from  the  people  they  criti- 
cise, they  are  still  essentially  bound  up  with  that  society, 
and  share  in  the  affectations,  hollowness,  morbid  and 
forced  feeling,  that  characterized  the  literary  age  which 
Thackeray,  Dickens,  and  George  Eliot  have  made  so 
remote  from  the  present.  Bulwer  was  in  some  respects 
of  a  finer  strain  than  his  companions,  but  he  could  not 
escape  from  among  them. 


THE  CORRESPONDENCE  OF  SIR  HENRY 
TAYLOR 

THERE  are  few  literary  pleasures  greater  tnan  to  read 
the  familiar  correspondence  of  men  of  intellectual  culti- 
vation; and  when,  as  in  the  case  of  Sir  Henry  Taylor, 
it  extends  over  a  long  life,  and  has  outlooks  upon  several 
eminent  groups  in  both  politics  and  literature,  one  may 
expect  this  pleasure  in  an  unusual  degree.  Taylor  was 
a  hard-working  man  in  the  colonial  office  all  his  life; 
he  wrote,  beside  other  poetical  works,  a  drama,  "Philip 
van  Arteveldt,"  which  is  thought  to  be  one  of  the  best 
plays  of  the  century,  and  has  had  a  continuous  sale  for 
fifty  years;  and  his  social  position  allowed  him  to  see 
much  of  distinguished  persons.  The  best  of  his  life  has 
been  already  made  public  in  his  "Autobiography,"  to 
which  the  present  volume  is  a  pendant,  but  by  no  means  a 
superfluous  one.  It  is  concerned  more  with  others  than 
with  himself.  He  entered  life  with  the  young  men  of  whom 
Mill  and  Spedding  were  the  most  intellectual,  and  his 
friendship  with  the  latter  was  lifelong.  His  own  temper- 
ament shared  rather  the  seriousness  and  sound  judg- 
ment of  such  companions  than  the  traditional  enthusiasm 
and  spirituality  of  the  poetic  character.  In  youth  he 
suffered  from  those  irrational  depressions  which  vex  men 
of  nervous  organization,  and  of  these  we  get  some  im- 
pressions by  way  of  reminiscence  when  he  visited  the 
country  where  he  passed  those  days.  He  speaks,  late 
in  life,  of  having  lost  the  sense  of  nervous  enjoyment 

75 


76  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

which  he  felt  in  the  beginning  of  his  poetic  career. 
Were  it  not  for  such  touches  as  these,  here  and  there  in 
the  pages,  we  should  hardly  see  the  poet  in  him  at  all. 
On  the  other  hand,  his  mind  was  constitutionally  prac- 
tical, even  skeptical,  slow  to  accept  and  slower  to  be 
fired;  he  says,  in  one  of  his  earlier  letters,  that  he  never 
had  a  devotional  feeling,  and  he  betrays  no  sign  of  one 
in  his  later  utterances.  It  was  a  singular  mind,  sympa- 
thetic with  the  political  economists  and  the  business  of 
administration  in  which  he  was  engaged,  and,  at  the 
other  extreme,  delighting  in  Wordsworth.  The  two  ele- 
ments, the  intellectual  and  the  literary,  were  admirably 
blended,  and  the  result  was  an  elevated  if  not  a  great 
life,  and  one  of  remarkable  harmony  within  itself.  In 
one  place,  he  comments  on  finding  himself  more  an  ob- 
server of  nature,  perhaps  from  being  less  occupied  with 
thoughts,  that  he  used  "to  love  poetry  for  its  own  sake, 
but  nature  for  the  sake  of  poetry";  and  this  shows  that 
his  start  was  rather  in  a  literary  impulse  than  in  an 
inspiration.  Then,  too,  the  daily  work  at  the  desk  must 
have  had  its  effect,  and  he  notes  that  his  strength  was 
thus  regularly  too  much  diverted  to  allow  of  writing 
poetry,  which  he  calls  one  of  the  most  exciting  and  ex- 
hausting of  pleasures.  He  could  not  always  command 
that  leisure,  sense  of  solitude,  hope,  and  high  opinion  of 
his  powers  which  he  enumerates  as  the  necessities  of 
poetic  production.  More  than  all,  he  came  late  to  the 
practice  of  the  art;  he  wrote  slowly  and  with  much  labor 
of  thought;  and  though  his  work  has  taken  a  very  re- 
spectable rank,  one  gets  the  impression  that  the  poetic 
spark  hi  him  smouldered  rather  than  burned.  But  it 
was  not  necessary  that  he  should  be  a  great  poet,  and, 
his  nature  was  too  capacious  to  let  him  be  a  poet  of  the 


CORRESPONDENCE   OF    SIR   HENRY    TAYLOR      77 

second  rank;  he  was  rather  a  remarkable  type  of  the 
intellectual  man,  with  the  soundest  moral  qualities  in  the 
exercise  of  his  mind,  and  it  is  for  this  that  he  is  inter- 
esting. 

The  first  group  with  which  he  was  brought  in  con- 
tact was  that  of  Wordsworth  and  Southey  and  some  of 
their  friends.  He  occasionally  met  both  of  these  men, 
and  through  Miss  Fenwick,  with  whom  he  was  inti- 
mate, he  had  nearer  views.  He  presents  Wordsworth, 
on  his  visits  to  London,  on  his  most  amiable  side,  and 
really  makes  him  attractive;  but  Miss  Fenwick 's  letters 
are  the  more  interesting.  She  bears  testimony  to  Words- 
worth's emotional  nature,  which  may  have  some  bearing 
on  his  excuse  that  he  did  not  write  love-poems  because 
they  would  have  been  too  passionate.  "What  strange 
workings  are  there  in  his  great  mind,  and  how  fearfully 
strong  are  all  his  feelings  and  affections!  If  his  intellect 
had  been  less  powerful,  they  must  have  destroyed  him 
long  ago;  but  even  in  the  midst  of  his  strongest  emo- 
tions his  attention  may  be  attracted  to  some  intellec- 
tual speculation,  or  his  imagination  excited  by  some  of 
those  external  objects  which  have  such  influence  over 
him;  and  his  feelings  subside  like  the  feelings  of  a  child, 
and  he  will  go  out  and  compose  some  beautiful  sonnet." 
There  are  traits  enough  mentioned  that  are  well  known 
-his  self-confidence,  heaviness,  delight  in  household 
praise,  an  old  man's  vanity;  but  as  Miss  Fenwick  never 
loses  the  attitude  of  admiration,  there  is  nothing  ill- 
natured  in  such  confessions.  Crabb  Robinson  was  with 
the  family,  and  she  deprecates  his  criticism  in  advance. 
She  has  a  bit  of  bright  portraiture  of  him:  "I  really  like 
him  very  well,  and  never  cease  wondering  how  he  has 
managed  to  preserve  so  much  kindliness  and  courtesy  in 


78  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

his  bachelor  state.  He  and  old  Wishaw  are  the  only  excep- 
tions I  have  met  with  to  the  tendency  it  has  to  deaden 
all  love  but  self-love;  but  these  two  men  seem  both  to 
love  themselves  and  to  make  others  love  them.  I  re- 
member making  out  to  my  own  satisfaction  that  Wishaw 
preserved  his  benevolence  through  the  want  of  his  leg  - 
a  want  that  made  him  feel  his  dependence  on  his  fellow- 
creatures,  while  it  called  forth  their  sympathy  and  kind- 
ness, and  all  those  little  attentions  which  cultivate  affec- 
tion both  in  the  giver  and  receiver  of  them;  and  thus  I 
imagined  that  the  heart  of  old  Wishaw  was  kept  humble, 
grateful,  and  loving.  But  Crabb  Robinson  ...  I 
thought,  the  other  day,  when  I  was  contemplating  him 
while  he  was  asleep  (he  always  sleeps  when  he  is  not 
talking),  that  his  ugliness  had  done  that  for  him  which 
the  want  of  a  leg  had  done  for  old  Wishaw:  it  was  great 
enough  to  excite  compassion  and  kindness,  which  awak- 
ened his  affections  as  well,  perhaps,  as  a  wife  and  chil- 
dren would  have  done,  and  made  him  the  kind,  service- 
able creature  he  is." 

Taylor's  sketches  of  Wordsworth  naturally  have  not 
the  freshness  that  belongs  to  reminiscences  of  men  who 
have  been  less  frequently  described,  but  they  have  the 
merit  of  directness.  He  reports  him  in  London  as  "mix- 
ing with  all  manner  of  men  and  delighting  in  various 
women,  for  he  says  his  passion  has  always  been  for  the 
society  of  women";  and  Lockhart  is  quoted  as  saying 
that  when  Wordsworth  met  Jeffrey  for  the  first  time  there 
the  poet  "played  the  part  of  a  man  of  the  world  to  per- 
fection, much  better  than  the  smaller  man,  and  did  not 
appear  to  be  conscious  of  anything  having  taken  place 
between  them  before."  Taylor  himself  describes  the 
old  poet  as  "one  of  the  most  extraordinary  human  phe- 


CORRESPONDENCE   OF    SIR   HENRY    TAYLOR      79 

nomena  that  one  could  have  in  the  house.  He  has  the 
simplicity  and  helplessness  of  a  child  in  regard  to  the 
little  transactions  of  life;  and  whilst  he  is  being  directed 
and  dealt  with  in  regard  to  these,  he  keeps  tumbling  out 
the  highest  and  deepest  thoughts  that  the  mind  of  man 
can  reach,  in  a  stream  of  discourse,  which  is  so  oddly 
broken  by  the  little  hitches  and  interruptions  of  common 
life  that  we  admire  and  laugh  at  him  by  turns.  Every- 
thing that  comes  into  his  mind  comes  out  —  weakness  or 
strength,  affection  or  vanities."  But  this  is  the  Words- 
worth that  the  biographies  all  know. 

Of  other  men  of  the  time  there  are  here  and  there 
a  few  glimpses,  sometimes  given  with  satirical  humor. 
This  is  how  Sadler  looked  at  a  dinner  with  Southey:  "He 
talked  slowly,  clumsily,  and  continually;  and  when  he 
stumbled  in  his  talk  and  broke  down,  he  got  slowly  up 
again  and  tried  to  do  better,  without  appearing  to  be 
sensible  that  anything  awkward  had  happened  to  him,  or 
that  everybody  had  hoped  and  expected  that  the  break- 
down would  finish  him.  After  tea,  however,  he  got 
warmer  and  more  flexible  in  his  discourse,  and  at  the  same 
time  not  so  hopelessly  continuous,  and  seemed  as  if  at 
times  he  might  be  agreeable,  and  at  other  times  silent." 
There  is,  too,  a  biting  characterization  of  "my  Lord 
Jeffrey,"  in  whose  case,  of  course,  Taylor  was  not  with- 
out disturbing  remembrance  of  what  the  critic  had  been 
to  Wordsworth;  but  he  thought  him  worth  seeing,  "in 
order  to  understand  by  what  small  springs  mankind  may 
be  moved  from  time  to  time.  There  came  from  him, 
with  a  sort  of  dribbling  fluency,  the  very  mince-meat  of 
small  talk,  with  just  such  a  seasoning  of  cleverness  as 
might  serve  to  give  it  an  air  of  pretension."  He  com- 
pares Wilson  —  "a  jolly,  fair-haired  ruffian,  full  of  fire 


8o  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

and  talent,  big  and  burly,  and  at  the  same  time  wild  and 
animated"  —  to  O'Connell,  and  remarks  that  he  had 
"never  seen  two  men,  each  striking  in  himself,  whose  ap- 
pearance bore  so  much  the  same  moral  stamp."  Of 
Southey  nothing  remarkable  is  recorded;  but  the  rela- 
tions between  him  and  Taylor  were  full  of  respect  upon 
both  sidesj  and  there  are  some  letters  of  advice  from  the 
younger  to  the  older  man,  in  which  there  is  admirable 
sense  for  all  literary  men  who  criticise  public  affairs. 
His  distinction  between  the  different  degrees  of  respons- 
ibility generated  by  the  duty  of  writing  and  that  of  act- 
ing upon  subjects  of  public  concern  is  most  important, 
and  his  criticism  on  Southey's  style,  that  "contempt,  if 
it  is  to  be  believed  to  be  genuine,  must  be,  not  expressed, 
but  betrayed/'  is  a  convenient  epigram  for  a  polemical 
writer  to  keep  always  about  him.  But  of  all  this  earlier 
circle  the  most  attractive  figure  is  certainly  that  of  Miss 
Fenwick,  whose  virtues  were  of  that  kind  which  too 
seldom  sees  the  light.  Her  character,  however,  is  felt 
rather  than  observed;  there  is  no  portrait  of  her  in  these 
letters,  but  very  much  is  suggested,  and  one  sees  her 
chiefly  by  the  reflection  of  her  personality  from  the  es- 
teem and  affection  of  Taylor  and  Aubrey  de  Vere.  The 
latter  pays  a  tribute  to  her,  at  the  time  of  her  death, 
in  a  letter  to  Taylor,  which  is  the  most  humane  in  the 
whole  series.  On  an  earlier  page  he  had  said  that  her 
moral  nature  was  greater  than  Wordsworth's,  and  here 
he  speaks  of  her  with  such  affection  and  sensitiveness  to 
the  unhappiness  of  her  life,  and  in  so  pure  a  religious 
spirit,  as  to  bring  home  to  the  reader  the  memory  of  a 
high  nature. 

To  come  to  Taylor's  own  contemporaries,  none  of  them 
who  contribute  letters  to  this  volume  impresses  one  more 


CORRESPONDENCE   OF    SIR   HENRY    TAYLOR      81 

pleasantly  than  De  Vere.  He  was  a  lifelong  friend  and 
a  poet  besides,  and  he  expressed  himself  frankly,  and 
often  with  fullness,  in  his  correspondence.  He  was  the 
only  one,  Taylor  confides  to  him,  who  thought  as  highly 
of  the  latter's  verses  as  he  did  himself,  and  there  was 
a  good  deal  of  poetic  talk  between  them  upon  each  other's 
work.  De  Vere's  mind  is  subtle,  and  yet  one  that  looks 
at  things  in  the  mass  and  as  a  whole;  not  that  he  general- 
izes, but  he  is  continuous,  a  seeker  after  unity  and  com- 
prehensiveness at  once.  Taylor  says  of  him  that  his  life 
was  a  soliloquy;  certainly  his  thoughts  have  the  charac- 
teristics of  a  mind  working  in  solitude  and  largely  within 
itself.  This  gives  distinction  to  his  letters,  and  the  extraor- 
dinary refinement  of  his  nature  adds  a  grace  which  is 
never  absent,  and  often  comes  upon  one  in  some  un- 
expected word,  some  minor  thought,  of  the  beauty  of 
which  the  writer  is  unconscious.  It  is  something  more, 
however,  that  we  obtain  here  a  few  personal  glimpses 
of  him.  In  one  place  we  find  him  "an  efficient  mob- 
orator."  It  was  during  the  Irish  disturbances  of  1847. 
"The  troops  came  to  attack  a  mob  of  several  thousands, 
and,  finding  that  they  were  in  Aubrey's  hands,  who  had 
stopped  them  and  was  making  a  speech  from  the  top  of  a 
wall,  the  officer  in  command  very  wisely  took  away  the 
troops,  and  Aubrey  brought  them  to  reason,  and  per- 
suaded them  to  give  up  their  enterprise  and  disperse." 
At  another  time  he  had  an  adventure  with  some  men  who 
came  to  kill  a  steward  whom  he  had  refused  to  dismiss, 
and  in  this  case,  too,  "his  invariable  self-possession"  stood 
him  in  good  stead;  but  his  knowledge  of  the  people  and 
their  knowledge  of  him  seem  to  have  been  the  cause  of 
his  success  in  dealing  with  them.  In  other  passages  we 
find  him  winning  a  good  word  from  Carlyle,  after  the 


82  LITERARY  MEMOIRS 

battle  between  them  (Carlyle  being  "furiously  and  ex- 
travagantly irreverent")  was  over;  and  in  general,  light- 
ness of  heart  goes  with  his  serious  mind  and  kind  manner. 
But  such  a  man  is  best  seen  in  his  own  words,  though 
one  will  readily  understand  the  feeling  that  there  is  a 
kind  of  privacy  in  this  portion  of  the  correspondence, 
an  intimacy  with  a  living  man,  which  sometimes  rebukes 
observation. 

The  friendship  between  the  two  poets  imparts  a  more 
personal  element  than  is  elsewhere  to  be  found  in  the 
volume,  except  where  Taylor  writes  of  his  own  youth- 
ful days, 

"Under  the  shade  of  melancholy  boughs," 

to  his  wife.  We  feel  this  closeness  when  De  Vere  speaks 
of  his  "vexation  at  Alice's  getting  ill  as  the  carriage 
wound  up  the  steep  hill  to  Perugia,  and  the  strange 
touch  of  grief  I  felt  at  observing  for  the  first  time  what 
looked  like  a  solid  tress  of  gray  in  your  hair,  as  you 
stood  before  me  at  church  in  Naples."  For  the  spirit 
of  this  friendship  we  leave  the  reader  to  search  in  what 
will  not  prove  the  least  valuable  portion  of  this  collec- 
tion; but  before  leaving  the  subject  let  us  quote  a  short 
passage  from  De  Vere's  own  retrospect:  "Although  there 
is  a  melancholy  about  the  past,  still  the  best  scenes  it 
presents  to  our  memory  seem  to  me  presented  even  more 
to  one's  hope.  They  are  less  records  of  what  was  than 
pledges  of  what  may  be,  and  therefore  must  be  in  that 
far  future  that  alone  makes  either  present  or  past  intel- 
ligible. One  knows,  looking  back  on  them,  that  some- 
how they  were  not  all  that  they  seem  to  have  been;  or 
rather  that,  though  they  were  all,  and  more  than  all, 
yet  they  were  not  either  felt  aright  or  understood  aright 


CORRESPONDENCE   OF    SIR   HENRY    TAYLOR      83 

at  the  moment."  We  must  find  space,  too,  for  De 
Vere's  account  of  Tennyson's  conservatism:  "  'You  are 
quite  a  conservative,'  I  said  to  him,  one  day.  He  re- 
plied, 'I  believe  in  progress,  and  would  conserve  the 
hopes  of  men."  This  was  in  1848,  and  Tennyson  was 
also  saying  in  very  good  British,  "Let  us  not  see  a 
French  soldier  land  on  the  English  shores,  or  I  will  tear 
him  limb  from  limb."  The  occasional  violence  of  the 
Laureate's  prose,  however,  is  not  a  new  thing  in  our 
anecdotes. 

There  is  a  good  deal,  in  one  way  and  another,  about 
Carlyle,  the  best  being  Taylor's  remark  a  propos  of  Fred- 
erick: "The  defect  of  Carlyle's  book  is  one  that  belongs 
to  the  author,  and  which  I  once  ventured  to  mention 
to  him  —  that  he  does  not  know  the  difference  between 
right  and  wrong."  Some  years  before,  in  1845,  ne  made 
a  happy  quotation  with  regard  to  Carlyle's  style:  "His 
light  comes  in  flashes,  and 

'Before  a  man  hath  time  to  say  "Behold!" 
The  jaws  of  darkness  do  devour  it  up' ; " 

and  he  comments  on  the  general  subject  of  Carlyle's 
teaching:  "I  suppose  that  it  will  generally  be  found  that 
when  a  man  quarrels  with  all  the  world  for  not  giving  an 
intelligible  account  of  the  ways  of  Providence,  it  is  be- 
cause he  is  much  perplexed  at  them  himself."  Later, 
in  1848,  he  says:  "Less  instructive  talk  I  never  listened 
to  from  any  man  who  had  read  and  attempted  to  think. 
His  opinions  are  the  most  groundless  and  senseless 
opinions  that  it  is  possible  to  utter.  ...  I  think  it 
is  the  great  desire  to  have  opinions  and  the  incapacity 
to  form  them  which  keeps  his  mind  in  a  constant  struggle, 


84  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

and  gives  it  over  to  every  kind  of  extravagance.  Taylor 
never  formed  a  more  favorable  opinion.  In  1868  he 
compares  him  to  "a  Puritan  of  the  seventeenth  century 
—  that  is,  in  his  nature  and  character  of  mind  (not,  of 
course,  in  his  creed,  if  he  has  one);  a  man  who  re- 
nounces argument  and  reasoning  which  every  other  intel- 
lectual man  of  the  time  thinks  it  necessary  to  stand 
upon,  and  trusts  to  visions  and  insights."  Upon  Carlyle, 
Aubrey  de  Vere,  too,  has  a  good  sentence  with  regard 
to  the  democrats  not  being  very  angry  with  him:  "The 
Revolutionary  people  readily  forgive  his  phrases  in  praise 
of  despotic  rule,  just  as  the  Whigs  forgave  Moore  for 
his  Irish  patriotism,  when  they  found  he  was  contented 
to  hang  his  harp  on  the  orange-trees  in  the  conserva- 
tories at  Holland  Park.  Carlyle's  admirers  feel  that  his 
works  are  at  the  Revolutionary  side." 

Sir  James  Stephens,  who  took  the  interest  of  an 
elderly  man  in  Taylor,  is  very  welcome  whenever  he 
appears  in  the  correspondence;  and  so  is  James  Sped- 
ding,  though  he  was  not  a  good  letter- writer.  Taylor 
characterizes  the  latter's  mind  very  sharply,  in  one 
place.  He  is  speaking  of  Spedding's  possible  influence 
in  causing  Tennyson's  revolt  from  Gladstone.  "There 
is  in  it  [his  mind],  however,  a  leaning  to  the  contro- 
versial, which  involves,  perhaps,  some  tincture  of  the 
spirit  of  contradiction.  If  left  to  himself,  he  will  con- 
tradict himself,  till  he  works  himself  into  just  thinking 
and  comes  to  a  correct  conclusion.  But  if  a  man  like 
Gladstone  is  positive  and  absolute  and  vehement,  and  all 
on  one  side,  the  spirit  will  lift  up  its  head  and  hiss  like 
a  serpent  that  is  trodden  on."  In  connection  with  this, 
and  in  general  with  the  place  Gladstone  occupies  in  the 
politics  at  the  end  of  the  volume,  it  is  amusing  to  turn 


CORRESPONDENCE   OF    SIR   HENRY   TAYLOR      85 

back  to  the  year  1839,  and  find  Taylor  writing  of  him, 
"Two  wants,  however,  may  lie  across  his  political  ca- 
reer—  want  of  robust  health  and  want  of  flexibility." 
Old  Lord  Ashburton  is  very  keenly  drawn,  especially  in 
regard  to  his  power  of  seeing  all  sides  of  a  question,  so 
that  he  was  said  to  be  notorious  for  convincing  every- 
body in  the  House  of  Commons  but  himself,  for  he  "gen- 
erally ended  by  voting  in  the  teeth  of  his  own  speech." 
To  this  earlier  period  belongs,  too,  a  parlor  scene  of  the 
Duke  of  Wellington  with  Miss  Jervis  singing  to  him  and 
entertaining  him  —  just  the  sort  of  scene  that  one  would 
find  only  in  a  letter.  Among  the  brightest  social  sketches, 
however,  is  that  of  the  scene  at  Lady  Ashburton's  table 
when  Tennyson  was  a  new-comer  at  the  seat  of  honor 
beside  her,  and  Taylor  gave  him  warning:  "Twenty  years 
ago  I  was  the  last  new  man,  and  where  am  I  now?" 
Whereupon  the  lady  rose  in  defense  of  her  constancy, 
and  ended  by  saying  that  "of  course  one's  affection  for 
one's  old  friends  was  a  different  thing."  Then  Tennyson 
asking  "  'what  time  it  took  to  make  an  old  friend/  I 
replied  that  with  her  five  years  reduced  it  to  the  decencies 
of  dry  affection";  and  on  Lady  Ashburton's  again  com- 
ing to  the  defense  of  the  lasting  character  of  her  attach- 
ments, Taylor  said  that  he  did  "not  dispute  that  they 
hardened  into  permanence.  But  what  I  was  speaking 
of  was  the  case  of  Alfred  Tennyson,  and  I  could  only  say 
that  this  time  last  year  I  had  seen  Mr.  Gold  win  Smith 
sitting  by  her  side  at  dinner,  just  as  I  had  seen  Alfred 
Tennyson  yesterday;  and  that  I  expected  to  see  Alfred 
Tennyson  this  time  next  year  occupying  the  position 
which  I  was  told  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  had  occupied  when 
he  was  here  last  week.  I  had  not  seen  it  myself,  but 
it  had  been  described  to  me.  He  came  to  the  Grange 


86  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

last  year,  innocent  and  happy  in  the  bloom  of  youth, 
with  violet  eyes;  and  what  he  was  now  I  had  not  seen, 
but  I  had  heard  of  it."  Then  Lady  Ashburton  explained 
that  a  stranger  is  often  shy,  and  so  on,  and  Tennyson 
broke  in  with,  "Then  it  appears,  by  what  you  say  your- 
self, that  you  do  not  show  me  any  particular  favors." 
She  said,  "Well,  it  is  a  different  sort  of  feeling  that  one 
has  for  a  new  friend  and  an  old  one;  but  you,  Mr.  Ven- 
ables,  are  now  almost  an  old  acquaintance,  and  you  can 
say  what  you  feel  about  it."  "Then,"  the  narrative  goes 
on  in  Taylor's  words,  "as  Venables  was  beginning  to 
bear  his  testimony,  to  his  infinite  horror  Alfred  said, 
Why,  you  told  me  yourself  that  Lady  Ashburton  had 
been  very  kind  to  you  at  first,  and  that  now'  —  Here 
Venables  stopped  him,  speaking  aside  in  a  deprecating 
tone,  and  I  ended  the  debate  by  saying,  Well,  Tenny- 
son, all  I  can  say  is  that  my  advice  to  you  is  to  rise  with 
your  winnings  and  be  off.'  Venables  said  to  Mrs.  Brook- 
field,  afterwards,  that  Alfred  was  truly  an  enfant  ter- 
rible" This,  as  an  example  of  conversation  "at  the 
Grange,"  is  not  without  interest,  for  one  does  not  often 
meet  with  verbatim  reports  of  how  the  men  and  women 
talked  at  that  famous  meeting-place.  It  is  pleasant  to 
read  in  the  next  letter  that  "there  was  no  pain  given  in 
these  passages  between  Lady  Harriet  and  me,"  but  all 
was  "light,  gay,  stingless  talk." 

Another  portion  of  the  correspondence  deals  with  polit- 
ical affairs,  and  here  one  finds  Lord  Gray,  whose  love  of 
justice  is  a  most  noticeable  trait,  and,  besides  Gladstone 
in  person,  talk  about  Disraeli,  Governor  Eyre,  and  the 
Jamaica  incident,  and  such  topics  as  reform  of  the  penal 
code,  Irish  affairs,  constitutional  changes,  Bulgaria,  the 
colonial  relations,  and  the  like;  but  this  portion  of  the 


CORRESPONDENCE   OF    SIR   HENRY   TAYLOR      87 

contents  is  incidental  and  comparatively  small.  It  is 
interesting  to  observe  that  to  a  lifelong  opposition  to 
field-sports  and  a  horror  of  vivisection  Taylor  added 
a  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  the  lash  upon  criminals,  and 
in  general  of  sharp  physical  punishments,  though  he  dis- 
approved, apparently,  of  employing  such  correctives  upon 
hardened  offenders.  The  inconsistency,  from  the  senti- 
mental point  of  view,  is  solved  by  remembering  that 
Taylor  thought  out  these  conclusions  rationally,  instead 
of  arriving  at  them  by  sensitive  feelings.  His  defense 
of  the  whipping-post  goes  to  the  point  of  advocacy. 
Of  the  persons  who  are  to  be  met  with,  in  this  part  of  the 
letters,  Lord  Gray  is  by  far  the  most  impressive;  and 
of  the  lesser  men,  the  Elliots  are  most  attractive.  The 
figure  of  Sir  John  Grant  is  one  not  to  be  met  with  out- 
side of  the  English  hunting-grounds,  and  it  is  briefly 
drawn:  "I  found  him  in  what  the  house-agents  call  a 
'spacious  mansion/  with  glowing  pictures  on  the  walls, 
presenting  divers  interesting  objects  without  clothes. 
And  I  found  flesh  in  a  variety  of  other  exquisite  forms 
upon  the  dinner-table,  and  he  looked  a  tall,  large,  solid, 
substantial  man,  with  a  russet  face  expressing  ease  and 
comfort;  and  I  asked  him  what  could  induce  him  to 
leave  all  this,  and  'live  laborious  days'  in  Jamaica.  His 
answer  was:  'I  cannot  tell  you,  for  I  do  not  know.  When 
I  came  from  India,  three  years  since,  I  found  my  leisure 
altogether  delightful,  and  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
what  I  was  made  for  was  to  swing  upon  a  gate.  I  have 
seen  no  reason  to  think  otherwise  since,  and  why  I  am 
going  to  Jamaica  I  cannot  understand!'  I  hear,"  con- 
cludes Taylor  ,"he  was  infinitely  laborious  as  Lieutenant- 
Governor  of  Bengal,  and  that  he  is  one  of  the  few  men 
to  whom  idleness  and  labor  are  equally  welcome."  But 


88  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

the  life-likeness  of  Taylor's  portraiture  and  anecdote  is 
well  enough  known  from  his  "Autobiography."  In  age  his 
pen  was  more  effective  than  in  early  manhood,  and  seems 
to  have  been  more  free  in  comment.  His  remark  upon 
Macaulay's  personal  appearance,  in  connection  with  the 
latter's  expressing  some  vanity  on  hearing  that  the  hand- 
somest woman  in  London  had  pronounced  his  profile  to 
be  a  study  for  an  artist,  is  an  admirable  example  of  the 
vigor  of  his  short  sentences  in  latter  days.  "His  looks," 
writes  Taylor,  "always  seemed  to  me  the  most  impudent 
contradiction  of  himself  that  Nature  had  ever  dared  to 
throw  in  a  man's  face." 

The  correspondence  as  a  whole  is  a  subsidiary  volume; 
but  apart  from  the  more  important  "Autobiography,"  it 
has  a  high  value  of  its  own  as  a  collection  of  letters  by 
men  and  women  of  cultivation,  and  one  feels  in  them  the 
presence  of  social  tact  and  manners,  as  well  as  much 
strength  of  mind,  occasional  wit,  and  in  one  case,  at 
least,  remarkable  grace  in  expression.  They  are  a  record 
of  London  life,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  the  cor- 
respondents often  lived  in  the  country;  for  it  was  Lon- 
don that  united  them.  It  is  quite  in  keeping  with  the 
tone  of  the  book  to  find  Taylor  himself,  in  early  man- 
hood, so  much  a  Londoner  as  to  confess  that  "the 
Regent's  Park  is  more  beautiful  in  my  eyes  than  Venice"; 
and  he  follows  up  the  declaration  by  a  description  of  his 
evening  walk  there  before  going  to  bed,  which  redeems 
his  preference  for  "the  most  beautiful  civic  scenery  in 
the  world."  The  intellectual  life  of  London  is  a  brac- 
ing one,  and  here  one  gets  somewhat  nearer  to  it  than 
books  often  bring  the  reader,  and  finds  himself  always 
in  excellent  company  for  the  mind.  Taylor's  individ- 


CORRESPONDENCE   OF    SIR   HENRY   TAYLOR      89 

uality  naturally  gives  unity  and  a  dominant  tone  to  the 
volume,  and  that  is  perhaps  the  reason  why  one  is  so 
constantly  impressed  with  the  solidity  of  mind  and  sound- 
ness of  judgment  which  seem  to  belong  to  all  these  cor- 
respondents. 


HAYWARD'S  CORRESPONDENCE 

MR.  HAYWARD,  alluding  at  the  end  of  his  life  to  his 
literary  debut  as  the  translator  of  "Faust,"  humorously 
remarks:  "Lady  Blanche  Hozier  asked  me,  the  other 
day,  if  I  read  German;  and  it  is  by  no  means  the  first 
time  that  the  same  question  has  been  put  to  me."  It 
is  as  the  author  of  that  excellent  prose  version  of  Goethe's 
great  work,  published  more  than  half  a  century  ago, 
that  his  name  is  best  known,  though  he  has  a  reputa- 
tion of  another  sort  as  a  critic,  which  rests  upon  the 
solid  and  copious  volumes  of  his  reviews.  He  was  born 
in  1 80 1,  and,  after  school  days,  was  articled  to  a  solici- 
tor, and  in  due  course  entered  at  the  Inner  Temple.  He 
joined  the  famous  London  Debating  Society  which  Mill 
and  the  philosophical  Radicals  had  founded,  where  he 
supported  the  Tory  side,  and  in  1828  he  became  editor 
of  the  Law  Magazine,  which  was  established  to  further 
the  cause  of  law  reform.  Out  of  his  interest  in  this 
subject  grew  some  relations  with  the  law  professors  at 
Gottingen,  whom  he  visited  in  1831,  and  this  was  the 
beginning  of  his  extensive  acquaintance  on  the  Continent, 
which  was  afterwards  of  great  influence  on  his  career. 
The  immediate  literary  result  of  this  trip  to  Germany 
was  the  translation  of  "Faust,"  issued  in  1833,  which  at 
once  gave  its  author  the  position  of  a  known  man  of 
letters.  Mr.  Hay  ward  remained  a  working  lawyer,  how- 
ever, and  received  in  1845  an  appointment  to  the  rank 
of  Queen's  Counsel;  but  this  advancement,  giving  rise 

91 


92  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

to  a  professional  quarrel  in  consequence  of  the  Benchers 
refusing  the  customary  election  to  their  body,  practically 
terminated  his  legal  career.  He  had  been  received  into 
society,  and,  as  he  was  already  in  association  with  emi- 
nent party  men,  he  fell  naturally  into  politics,  as  one  of 
the  Peelites,  and  was  a  main  support  of  the  Morning 
Chronicle  while  it  was  in  the  interest  of  that  coterie. 
His  labors  in  journalism  were  signalized  by  his  writing  a 
leading  article  on  an  important  debate,  on  the  bill  for 
the  repeal  of  the  Navigation  Laws,  in  season  for  the  morn- 
ing's paper  —  a  feat  of  which  it  is  said:  "It  revolution- 
ized at  a  stroke  the  whole  art  of  leader-writing,  and 
statesmen  found  all  at  once  that,  with  a  quiet  man  of 
letters  sitting  in  a  corner  of  the  gallery  with  a  bit  of 
pencil,  they  had  to  lay  their  account  for  prompt  and 
energetic  criticism  in  the  newspapers  the  next  day,  con- 
currently with  the  publication  of  their  own  speeches, 
instead  of  criticism  the  day  after,  when  the  speeches 
had  done  their  work." 

The  close  connection  with  public  life  which  Mr.  Hay- 
ward  formed  in  the  course  of  these  years  was  maintained 
by  him;  and,  though  he  was  never  in  the  House  or  in 
Government,  his  place  in  society,  his  long  experience 
and  his  abilities,  and  a  certain  knowledge  of  men,  sus- 
tained him  in  an  unofficial  position  of  influence.  Thiers 
made  him  the  channel  of  advice  during  the  Crimean  war; 
and  in  1870,  during  the  former's  diplomatic  tour  to  solicit 
the  good  offices  of  the  Powers  in  behalf  of  France,  his 
first  visit  in  England  was  at  the  rooms  of  his  old  friend. 
Slidell,  of  Confederate  fame,  also  used  Mr.  Hayward  as 
a  means  of  communication  in  his  efforts  to  obtain  recog- 
nition for  his  Government;  and,  in  connection  with  this, 
one  notes  a  call  he  made  on  Motley  at  Vienna  in  1862, 


HAYWARD'S   CORRESPONDENCE  93 

whom  he  found  "more  unreasonable  than  ever,  vowing 
that  the  restoration  of  the  Union  in  its  entirety  was  'as 
sure  as  the  sun  in  heaven.' "  In  the  changes  of  the 
Ministries,  especially  in  the  days  of  coalition,  Mr.  Hay- 
ward  was  en  rapport  with  the  principals,  and  occasionally 
was  useful  in  personal  negotiations.  It  was  on  services 
of  this  nature,  in  the  formation  of  Lord  Aberdeen's  Cabi- 
net, that  he  grounded  his  application  for  a  Charity  Com- 
missionership,  which  failed;  and  it  is  curious  to  note 
his  observation  on  this  incident:  "When  men  work  to- 
gether for  a  party  object,  they  are  all  entitled,  hi  their 
several  ways,  to  a  share  in  the  advantage  of  success." 
This  is  not  the  spoils  doctrine,  for  which  it  might  be 
mistaken,  but  that  of  party  reward  in  filling  new  or  va- 
cant offices  as  against  the  aristocratic  system  of  nepotism. 
Mr.  Hayward  never  obtained  any  of  the  material  fruits 
of  political  service,  though  a  second  attempt  was  made 
for  him  in  later  years.  He  was  successively  in  intimate 
relations  with  Lyndhurst,  Newcastle,  Palmerston,  and 
Gladstone,  and  apparently  grew  liberal  with  his  times. 
It  is  amusing  to  find  him  dismissing  Disraeli  in  1850  in 
a  couple  of  lines  as  "very  nearly  if  not  quite  forgotten"; 
and  he  adds,  "How  soon  one  of  these  puffed-up  reputa- 
tions goes  down!"  In  1880  he  writes,  "I  have  been 
longing  for  the  fall  of  the  Disraeli  Government  as  I  did 
for  the  fall  of  the  Second  Empire."  He  had  taken  his 
name  off  the  Carl  ton  Club  in  1870,  having  apparently 
had  the  experience  of  much  bad  manners  there,  after  it 
became  more  a  strictly  political  club  than  it  was  in  the 
first  part  of  the  century;  and  he  was  evidently  a  thorough- 
going Liberal  when  he  died,  as  we  read  in  one  of  his  last 
letters,  "During  my  long  life  I  never  remember  a  period 
when  the  English  people  were  less  Radical  than  now." 


94  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

Ten  years  ago  Gladstone  was  writing  to  him  in  respect 
to  the  obstructiveness  of  the  Upper  Ten  Thousand  in 
the  political  progress  of  the  century,  to  the  same  effect 
as  was  the  language  he  used  upon  the  stump.  Hay  ward's 
interest  in  politics  continued  unabated  until  his  death. 

In  the  whole  course  of  his  career  he  was  a  careful 
and  fluent  writer,  being  reckoned  the  best  of  the  essay- 
ists of  the  old  school;  and  since,  in  his  later  years,  he 
had  the  great  advantage  of  treating  of  men  whom  he  had 
known  all  about  in  life,  his  work  has  a  special  interest 
and  value.  Literature  consequently  shares  with  politics 
the  pages  of  this  correspondence,  which  derives  con- 
siderable luster  from  the  many  distinguished  names 
among  the  signatures.  At  the  date  of  the  beginning 
of  the  series  Mr.  Hayward  was  thirty-three  years  old, 
and  had  already  given  some  of  those  little  dinners  at  his 
rooms  in  the  Temple  for  which  he  was  afterward  noted. 
He  gathered  there  intellectual  men  and  brilliant  women, 
and  in  particular  he  exercised  hospitality  toward  foreign- 
ers; men  so  various  as  General  von  Radowitz,  Louis 
Blanc,  and  the  poet  Dupont,  being  among  his  guests. 
He  gives  in  one  place  a  few  instances  of  the  ignorance 
of  one  another  among  the  eminent  writers  of  Europe  that 
had  come  under  his  observation.  Manzoni  did  not 
know  Bulwer  by  name  in  1834;  Schlegel,  arriving  in 
England  in  1832,  had  not  heard  of  Macaulay;  M.  Charles 
Dupin  did  not  know  of  Babbage's  ' Manufactures'  four 
months  after  publication;  and  Say,  the  economist,  was 
unacquainted  with  Whately's  name,  though  Mr.  Hay- 
ward  found  in  Say's  library  at  the  time  a  presentation 
copy  of  the  'Lectures'  "from  the  Archbishop  of  Dublin." 
At  Mr.  Hayward's  rooms  such  international  indifference 
was  as  likely  to  be  corrected  as  anywhere  in  London.  He 


HAYWARD'S   CORRESPONDENCE  95 

made  many  short,  journeys  to  the  Continent,  usually  to 
Paris,  and  thus  renewed  and  strengthened  old  ties  and 
formed  new  ones;  but  his  travels  dealt  with  persons  of 
distinction  and  affairs,  and  were  fruitful  only  of  informa- 
tion and  social  alliances.  The  mass  of  his  correspond- 
ence, consequently,  is  wide  in  range  of  acquaintance,  and 
friendly  in  tone;  there  is  in  it  naturally  a  very  large  pro- 
portion of  what  is  transitory  and  not  a  little  that  is  trivial 
-society  and  political  news,  the  record  of  dinners,  the 
chances  of  Parliament,  ministerial  changes,  etc.  The 
whole  is  a  very  heterogeneous  collection  of  notes  and 
letters,  light  and  serious,  dull  and  entertaining,  but  it 
affords  a  fair  retrospect  of  half  a  century  of  London 
life  in  the  world  of  affairs  and  entertainment.  Of  the 
substance  it  is  to  be  said  that  it  has  less  solid  value  than 
one  would  have  expected. 

The  literary  portion  is  extraordinarily  meager.  The 
best  of  the  letters  are  from  the  sprightly  pen  of  Mrs. 
Norton;  and  the  feminine  correspondence  in  general  is 
the  most  pleasant  feature  of  the  volumes.  Very  few 
of  the  letters,  however,  deal  with  literary  reputations 
either  in  the  way  of  anecdote  or  criticism.  In  reply  to 
a  request  for  material  for  an  essay  upon  Rogers,  Mrs. 
Norton  writes  very  justly  of  him  as  a  small  man  filling  a 
miraculously  large  place  in  the  world,  and  defines  his 
individuality  by  saying  that  tastes  were  to  him  what  pas- 
sions are  to  other  men:  "He  did  nothing  rash.  I  am 
sure  Rogers  as  a  baby  never  fell  down,  unless  he  was 
pushed;  but  walked  from  chair  to  chair  of  the  drawing- 
room  furniture  steadily  and  quietly  till  he  reached  the 
place  where  the  sunbeam  fell  on  the  carpet."  He  pre- 
ferred a  lullaby  to  the  merriest  game  of  romps,  she 
thinks,  and  would  have  begged  that  his  long  clothes 


96  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

might  be  made  of  fine  mull  muslin  instead  of  cambric, 
which  was  capable  of  a  thing  "he  loathed,  starch," 
Lady  Dufferin  writes  on  the  same  subject:  "I  never 
could  lash  myself  into  a  feeling  of  affection  or  admiration 
for  him.  ...  I  have  heard  him  say  many  graceful 
things,  but  few  kind  ones,  and  he  never  seemed  to  me 
thoroughly  in  earnest  save  in  expressing  contempt  or 
dislike.  ...  It  seemed  a  positive  pain  to  him  to  hear 
any  modern  poet  praised,  and  I  remember  his  treating  me 
with  a  rudeness  almost  bearish  because  I  indiscreetly 
avowed  how  much  I  admired  Tennyson's  Trincess.'  " 
She  then  tells  the  anecdote  of  being  accidentally  left  in 
the  dark  with  him,  and  his  jest:  "Ah,  my  dear,  if  sweet 
seventy-eight  could  come  again!  Mais  ces  beaux  jours 
sont  passes"  Besides  these  brief  passages  on  Rogers 
there  is  really  nothing  of  interest  in  regard  to  the  world 
of  letters,  except  an  opinion  of  Bulwer's  on  Macaulay, 
in  which  he  remarks  that  the  historian's  acquaintance 
with  the  world  —  that  is,  with  men's  actual  characters  — 
was  slight,  and  then  recites  what  are  now  the  common- 
places of  criticism  on  Macaulay  (but  this  was  in  1861) 
-  that  his  style  excludes  many  of  the  nobler  excellences, 
being  without  modesty,  or  suggestiveness,  and  is,  besides, 
indebted  to  coarse  tricks  of  art  in  color  and  contrast,  while 
the  secret  of  his  vogue  is  discovered  in  his  relieving  his 
readers  from  any  necessity  to  think.  Apropos  of  a  wordy 
letter  of  Carlyle's  Mr.  Hayward  himself  writes:  "I  never 
yet  followed  him  to  the  authorities  without  finding  him 
wrong.  In  my  'Essay  on  Marshal  Saxe'  I  have  proved 
from  signed  documents  that  Carlyle's  labored  account 
of  the  battle  of  Fontenoy  is  essentially  incorrect.  He 
is  a  man  of  genius,  undoubtedly,  but  he  has  injured 
instead  of  improving  literature,  and  taste;  and,  as  to 


HAYWARD'S   CORRESPONDENCE  97 

his  conversation,  if  he  spoke  English  and  attended  to 
the  rules  of  good  breeding,  its  charm  for  the  mass  of  his 
admirers  would  disappear."  In  another  place  is  an 
equally  brief  judgment  on  Balzac,  whom  he  was  rereading 
in  his  seventy-eighth  year  and  found  not  to  improve:  "the 
fineness  of  observation  and  analysis  of  feeling  are  unde- 
niable, but  his  descriptions,  both  of  places  and  charac- 
ters, are  tediously  spun  out,  his  plots  teem  with  im- 
probability, and  he  has  a  vulgar  fondness  for  wealth 
and  rank." 

These  extracts  practically  comprise  the  entire  literary 
interest  of  the  two  volumes;  nor  are  there  any  anecdotes 
by  the  way  to  speak  of,  if  we  except  the  droll  suggestion 
of  Hook  to  Lord  Lyndhurst,  who  had  come  to  a  dinner 
with  gold-laced  trousers,  that  "to  appear  with  all  his 
glories  he  should  reverse  his  position  in  the  chair." 
Lord  Lyndhurst  appears  very  agreeably  in  the  earlier 
pages,  but  death  soon  removed  him.  To  him  is  attrib- 
uted the  witticism  apropos  of  Mme.  Genlis's  keeping 
her  books  in  detached  cases,  the  male  authors  in  one 
and  the  female  in  the  other,  that  the  reason  was  "she  did 
not  wish  to  add  to  her  library"  —  a  joke  unfairly  claimed 
by  James  Smith.  Of  the  correspondence  with  public 
men,  that  of  Sir  Henry  Bulwer  (Lord  Balling)  is  of 
most  note.  In  his  long  and  varied  service  he  had  ex- 
perience of  state  affairs  in  many  lands,  and  his  remarks 
are  pointed,  shrewd,  and  sensible.  Writing  of  the 
Ionian  Island  difficulty  in  1863,  ne  illustrates  his  width 
of  view  and  soundness  of  principle:  "The  tendency  to 
resign  empire  is  a  dangerous  one  for  an  empire  to  fall 
into;  but  if  a  people  wish  to  get  out  of  your  hands,  and 
public  opinion  is  not  for  keeping  them,  a  Minister  in 
what  is  called,  and  is,  a  free  country  can  have  no  policy 


98  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

of  his  own  in  the  matter."  And,  again,  of  the  Eastern 
question,  in  the  same  year,  he  states  the  function  of  Eng- 
land very  aptly  as  being  "to  prevent  no  government  taking 
the  place  of  some  government,  and  urging  and  helping  a 
bad  government  to  be  better  than  it  was."  As  the  nego- 
tiator of  the  Bulwer-Clayton  Treaty,  what  he  thought  of 
our  diplomacy  has  some  interest,  and  he  expressed  his 
opinion  very  frankly  on  the  question  of  the  indirect 
claims  being  urged  under  the  Washington  Treaty:  "When 
I  had  to  make  a  treaty  with  them  [the  American  states- 
men] I  took  the  trouble  of  going  over  all  their  own 
treaties,  and  only  using  in  important  passages  such  words 
as  they  had  used,  in  the  sense  in  which  they  had  used 
them.  Then  when  they  began  their  usual  disputes 
about  interpretation,  I  quoted  their  own  authority.  All 
their  own  newspapers  acknowledged  I  was  right." 
Sir  Henry's  mode  of  meeting  his  cousins  in  diplomacy 
was  one  of  commendable  safety.  He  exhibits  solidity 
and  sense  on  all  occasions  where  he  is  met  in  these  letters, 
and  yet  there  was  a  vein  of  daring  in  him  hardly  conso- 
nant with  his  caution.  His  characterization  of  Peel  as  a 
state-clock  which  was  silent  till  it  struck  the  hour,  is 
admirable,  as  are  also  his  observations  on  the  inconven- 
iences of  such  a  political  time-piece  in  a  representative 
Government. 

There  are  one  or  two  interesting  communications  from 
Mr.  A.  G.  Dunlop  about  Spain,  in  which  he  notices  that 
Spanish  art  was  a  temporary  importation  from  Italy, 
as  Spanish  wealth  was  from  America,  and  both  almost 
to  be  classed  as  matters  of  chance,  not  national  develop- 
ment; and  he  contrasts  the  Spanish  peasant  with  the 
Italian,  South  German,  or  Greek  people,  as  without  ap- 
preciation of  art,  not  caring  for  flowers  or  trees  even, 


HAYWARD'S   CORRESPONDENCE  99 

and  staring  at  pictures  only  because  they  are  "holy"  and 
appeal  to  his  superstition.  He  adds  that  the  Spaniards 
are  likewise  without  any  desire  for  knowledge,  and  de- 
clares there  is  no  avenir  for  the  pure-blooded  race:  "If 
the  Spaniard  remain  any  longer  as  he  is  in  spite  of  rail- 
ways and  increased  intercourse,  the  commerce  of  the 
seaboard  will  more  and  more  slip  away  into  the  hands  of 
foreigners  —  French,  German,  Swede,  English  —  and  the 
pure  race  (native)  will  fall  back  on  the  interior  and 
inland  villages,  hewers  of  wood  and  drawers  of  water." 
There  are  letters,  too,  from  Lady  Clanricarde  (daughter 
of  George  Canning),  with  excellent  passages  on  the  con- 
dition of  Ireland,  worth  reading  now  as  evidence  of  the 
long-established,  long  well-known  state  of  affairs  there. 
"It  appears  to  me,"  she  says,  "contrary  to  all  I  have 
seen  or  read  that  a  great  amount  of  discontent  continu- 
ing in  a  country  should  not  produce  serious  results  of 
some  sort."  This  concludes  the  list  of  really  notable 
letters  in  the  department  of  public  affairs. 

Of  Mr.  Hayward  himself  one  forms  a  conception  not 
very  deeply  marked.  Mr.  W.  E.  Forster  says  that  the 
unique  characteristic  of  his  political  thought  and  ex- 
perience was  "the  result  of  a  curious  combination  of  a 
hard,  worldly,  even  cynical  sympathy  with  popular  move- 
ments, and  ideal  aspirations."  He  had  enemies  and 
prejudices;  but  his  strength  of  character  seems  to  have 
included  independence,  sincerity,  and  perfect  courage 
as  elements,  and  he  was  undoubtedly  liberalized  by  the 
variety  of  his  associations  with  other  minds.  His  career 
was  laborious  and  honored,  and  one  cannot  but  regret 
that  he  left  no  more  extensive  and  notable  memoirs,  as 
he  might  well  have  done.  This  correspondence  is  but 
a  meager  substitute. 


THACKERAY'S  LETTERS 

How  much  formal  biography  really  adds  to  our 
knowledge  of  a  great  literary  character  is  a.  curious  ques- 
tion. Perhaps  it  is  not  modesty  nor  a  proud  and  sensi- 
tive reserve  that  urges  a  nature  like  Hawthorne's  to  try 
to  evade  the  biographer;  nor  does  mere  humbleness  of 
spirit  account  wholly  for  Thackeray's  repeated  injunc- 
tion upon  his  heirs  not  to  allow  the  public  to  view  his 
private  life.  Probably  every  man  of  literary  genius 
who  has  found  expression  for  what  was  in  him  feels  that 
his  true  self  is  there  in  his  works,  and  that  in  his  per- 
sonal life,  with  all  its  accidental  and  eccentric  details,  the 
circumstances  of  his  position  and  the  varying  moods  of 
his  temperament  obscure  the  reality,  and  are,  more 
often  than  not,  misleading.  A  quarrel  that  was  but  an 
incident  of  a  lifetime  becomes  a  long  episode  in  the 
book;  a  scandal  that  quickly  melted  away  comes  back 
as  a  cloud  not  to  be  dispersed;  an  irritable  letter,  an 
imprudent  witticism,  a  blunder  in  some  fit  of  dullness, 
a  piece  of  self-deception  that  was  only  momentary,  and 
all  the  thousand  and  one  superficial  matters  that  fill  the 
day  are  brought  into  prominence,  as  if  they,  and  not 
the  spirit  that  underwent  these  crosses,  were  the  life 
itself.  But  the  real  man  is  in  his  books.  One  knows 
that  this  is  so  in  Thackeray's  case.  The  personality  of 
the  author  is  so  blended  with  his  characters,  and  makes 
so  largely  the  main  charm  of  his  style,  that  one  comes 
to  know  him  with  exceptional  nearness,  and  to  feel  that 


102  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

iiiere  is  pp  other  reason  to  desire  a  formal  biography  of 
him  than  to  have  more  of  the  same  thing. 

In  reading  the  letters  which  Thackeray  wrote  to 
his  friends,  the  Brookfields,  one  is  most  struck  by  this 
identity  of  the  man  and  the  author;  it  affords  a  most 
startling  test  of  Thackeray's  sincerity.  Those  who  are 
lovers  of  his  works,  thoroughly  familiarized  with  his 
ways  of  looking  upon  the  world  and  his  manner  of  treat- 
ing the  individuals  who  compose  it,  experience  no  sur- 
prise at  this;  but  they  are  delighted  to  hear  the  old 
voice  speaking  again,  and  pleased  to  have  his  qualities 
brought  out  in  this  private  correspondence  so  plainly  that 
no  one,  however  blind  to  his  real  nature  in  his  novels, 
can  fail  to  find  in  the  writer  the  kindliness,  the  honesty, 
and  goodness  of  heart  which  lie  at  the  bottom  of  all  his 
great  achievements  in  literature.  He  is  to  be  seen  here 
as  genuinely  as  Steele  in  those  letters  to  his  wife,  which 
are  as  charming  a  piece  of  biography  as  English  litera- 
ture has  to  show. 

The  collection  covers  eight  years  of  Thackeray's  ma- 
ture life.  It  is  composed  of  every-day  notes,  written 
from  the  club  or  his  lodgings  about  the  things  of  the 
hour;  or  of  longer  letters  of  travel,  sent  from  some 
watering-place  on  the  Continent,  or  some  country  retreat 
in  England,  or  from  Paris,  whither  he  made  frequent 
excursions.  They  are  for  the  most  part  entirely  per- 
sonal, and  describe  what  happened  to  himself,  or  confide 
the  moods  that  visited  him;  and,  too,  they  are  especially 
the  letters  of  a  novelist  —  the  world  that  he  sees  is  the 
very  same  that  he  writes  about.  One  may  say  that  in 
the  passages  concerning  persons  we  read  his  novels  in 
the  rough,  his  notes  still  unelaborated ;  and  we  see  quite 
plainly  the  method  in  which  he  worked  up  his  observa- 


THACKERAY'S   LETTERS  103 

tions,  and  the  way  in  which  life  reacted  upon  his  mind. 
Such  is  the  description  of  the  friend  of  his  youth,  whom 
a  score  of  years  before  he  thought  "the  most  fascinating, 
accomplished,  witty,  and  delightful  of  men": 

"I  found  an  old  man  in  a  room  smelling  of  brandy  and 
water,  at  five  o'clock,  at—  — ,  quite  the  same  man  that 
I  remember,  only  grown  coarser  and  stale  somehow,  like 
a  piece  of  goods  that  has  been  hanging  up  in  a  shop 
window.  He  has  had  fifteen  years  of  a  vulgar  wife,  very 
much  brandy  and  water,  I  should  think,  and  a  depressing 
profession;  for  what  can  be  more  depressing  than  a  long 
course  of  hypocrisy  to  a  man  of  no  small  sense  of  humor? 
It  was  a  painful  meeting.  We  tried  to  talk  unreservedly, 
and  as  I  looked  at  his  face  I  remembered  the  fellow  I 
was  so  fond  of.  ...  He  must  have  been  glad,  too, 
when  I  went  away,  and  I  dare  say  is  more  scornful 
about  me  than  I  about  him.  I  used  to  worship  him  for 
about  six  months,  and  now  he  points  a  moral  and  adorns 
a  tale  such  as  it  is  in  Tendennis.'  .  .  .  Poor  old  Harry 

!  and  this  battered,  vulgar  man  was  my  idol  of 

youth." 

It  is  worth  noting  that  Thackeray's  satire  is  not  merely 
that  of  a  man  acquainted  with  the  world,  not  hard,  and 
incisive,  and  sneering  only,  but  that  of  a  man  who  in 
his  youth  had  "a  knack  of  setting  up  idols  to  worship," 
and  in  whom  acquaintance  with  the  world  was  not  only 
knowledge,  but  disappointment.  Regret,  the  remem- 
brance of  better  things,  is  one  of  the  colors  of  his  style; 
it  is  "the  principle"  of  which  he  elsewhere  speaks  as 
based  "on  the  eternal  data  of  perennial  reminiscences." 

A  particular  interest  attaches  to  the  half  dozen  para- 
graphs, scattered  through  the  volume,  in  which  Thacke- 
ray expresses  his  convictions  upon  religious  topics.  It 


104  LITERARY   MEMORIES 

is  a  very  simple  creed,  and  is  usually  brought  to  the 
surface  by  way  of  reaction  against  some  irritating  doc- 
trine of  a  more  stalwart  church  than  that  in  which  he 
is  militant.  A  sentence  or  two  may  not  be  out  of 
place:  — 

"The  light  upon  all  the  saints  in  heaven  is  just  as 
much,  and  no  more,  God's  work  as  the  sun  which  shall 
shine  to-morrow  upon  this  infinitesimal  speck  of  crea- 
tion, and  under  which  I  shall  read,  please  God,  a  letter 
from  my  kindest  lady  and  friend.  About  my  future 
state  I  don't  know;  I  leave  it  in  the  disposal  of  the  aw- 
ful Father  —  but  for  to-day  I  thank  God  that  I  can 
love  you,  and  that  you  yonder,  and  others  besides,  are 
thinking  of  me  with  a  tender  regard.  Hallelujah  may  be 
greater  in  degree  than  this,  but  not  in  kind,  and  count- 
less ages  of  stars  may  be  blazing  infinitely,  but  you  and 
I  have  a  right  to  rejoice  and  believe  in  our  little  part,  and 
to  trust  in  to-day  as  in  to-morrow.  .  .  .  When  I  am 
on  a  cloud  a-singing  or  a-pot-boiling,  I  will  do  my  best; 
and  if  you  are  ill,  you  can  have  consolation;  if  you  have 
disappointments,  you  can  invent  fresh  sources  of  hope 
and  pleasure.  ...  By  Jove!  I'll  admire,  if  I  can, 
the  wing  of  a  cock-sparrow  as  much  as  the  pinion  of 
an  archangel,  and  adore  God,  the  Father  of  the  earth, 
first;  waiting  for  the  completion  of  my  senses,  and  the 
fulfilment  of  his  intentions  towards  me  afterwards  when 
this  scene  closes  over  us.  So,  when  Bullar  turns  up  his 
eye  to  the  ceiling,  I'll  look  straight  at  your  dear  kind 
face  and  thank  God  for  knowing  that,  my  dear;  and 
though  my  nose  is  a  broken  pitcher,  yet,  lo  and  behold! 
there's  a  well  gushing  over  with  kindness  in  my  heart, 
where  my  dear  lady  may  come  and  drink." 

All  this,  however,  one  can  read  in  the  novels  as  plainly, 


THACKERAY'S   LETTERS  105 

if  one  will,  and  perceive  in  it  the  real  piety  toward  heaven 
and  brotherliness  toward  man  which  belong  to  a  large, 
grateful,  and  honest  heart,  much  perplexed  and  cast  down 
before  the  gorgeous  presence  of  the  Church  Established. 
But  why  go  on  to  detail  what  every  one  interested 
will  read  for  himself?  The  little  satirical  vignettes,  ma 
cousine  at  Paris,  the  cavalier  lady  in  the  row,  the 
Continental  table  d'hote  where  he  dined  like  "an  ordi- 
nary person,"  the  French  plays  with  their  naughtinesses 
and  their  little  girls  singing  for  the  dragoons,  Jules 
Janin,  the  Chinaman  kissing  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  to 
that  "old  boy's"  great  surprise,  the  old  gentleman  in 
pantalets  —  all  these  one  must  look  at  for  himself.  The 
unfailing  interest  in  human  life,  especially  in  the  worldly 
stage,  and  in  little  else  besides;  the  preoccupation  with 
the  novels  in  hand,  and  their  reality  to  the  author  as 
part  and  parcel  of  the  life  he  has  lived;  the  just  eye  for 
the  visible  weaknesses  of  mortals,  and  the  charitable- 
ness and  self-abasement  of  him  who  recognized  it  all  as 
of  a  piece  with  his  own  humble  human  nature;  the  con- 
stant and  unwearied  lovingness  of  the  man  whose  Lares 
and  Penates  were  tenderness  and  humor;  his  generous 
admiration  —  these  belong  to  his  personality,  and  are 
not  to  be  understood  except  in  their  concrete  expression; 
and  the  whole  volume  which  contains  these  things  must 
be  read,  if  one  would  understand.  It  is  in  no  sense  a 
life  of  Thackeray;  it  is  a  better  thing  —  it  is  Thacke- 
ray living. 


DARWIN'S  LIFE 

THERE  is  nothing  more  useful  to  observe  in  the  life  of 
Darwin  than  its  simplicity.  He  was  the  man  of  science 
as  Marlborough  was  the  soldier,  and  he  was  only  that. 
From  boyhood  he  refused  all  other  ways  of  life  and 
knowledge  as  by  instinct,  and  in  his  maturity  the  ill 
health  which  ends  the  career  of  ordinary  men  only  con- 
firmed him  in  his  own;  he  was  always  the  collector,  the 
investigator,  or  the  theorizer.  A  second  quality,  which 
is  general  enough  to  be  constantly  attracting  attention, 
is  the  thoroughly  English  character  of  his  life.  The 
stock  from  which  he  sprang  was  rich  in  old  English 
qualities  of  vigor,  sense,  and  originality;  the  house  in 
which  he  was  reared  offers  an  excellent  type  of  Eng- 
lish family  life,  and  was  as  good  a  place  to  be  born  in 
as  could  be  desired  for  any  son;  his  father's  strong  char- 
acter, the  influence  of  his  older  relatives,  the  ordinary 
schools  he  attended,  the  smallest  incidents  of  his  child- 
hood, even  the  jokes  of  his  playfellows,  belong  to  the 
moral  climate  of  the  old  country;  and  it  does  not  need 
the  grouse-shooting,  the  Cambridge  undergraduate  sup- 
pers, and  the  proposition  that  he  should  choose  the 
Church  for  a  profession  to  tell  us  where  we  are.  In- 
deed, Darwin  in  his  youth,  spirited,  cordial,  and  over- 
flowing with  health,  in  his  early  surroundings  of  Eng- 
lish strength  and  kindness,  was  quite  as  attractive  as  in 
his  quieter,  and  in  some  respects  narrower,  working  life. 

He  certainly  won  upon  the  men  whom  he  met  at  the 

107 


io8  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

outset  of  his  career.  "Looking  back,"  he  says,  "I  infer 
that  there  must  have  been  something  in  me  a  little  supe- 
rior to  the  common  run  of  youths:  otherwise  the  above- 
mentioned  men,  so  much  older  than  me  and  higher  in 
academical  position,  would  never  have  allowed  me  to 
associate  with  them.  Certainly  I  was  not  aware  of  any 
such  superiority;  and  I  remember  one  of  my  sporting 
friends,  Turner,  who  saw  me  at  work  with  my  beetles, 
saying  that  I  should  some  day  be  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal 
Society,  and  the  notion  seemed  to  me  preposterous." 
Of  these  men  Henslow  was  the  most  attached  to  him  and 
interested  in  his  success.  He  had  not  done  much  more 
than  work  at  "his  beetles,"  but  his  scientific  taste  was 
already  the  ruling  genius  of  his  life.  It  is  surprising  to 
see  how  completely  he  remained  untouched  by  the  ordi- 
nary influences  of  a  university  training;  he  thought  in 
later  years  that  his  scholastic  education  had  been  a  waste 
of  time,  and  he  seems  justified  when  one  perceives  how 
little  good  he  got  from  it.  His  was  a  mind  that  belonged 
to  himself,  self-fed,  almost  self-made;  he  lived  his  own 
life,  and  not  another's,  from  the  start;  though  his  taste 
for  collecting  was  hereditary,  the  persistence  with  which 
he  gave  himself  up  to  following  it,  the  completeness 
of  his  surrender  to  his  one  predominant  talent,  was  his 
own.  He  was,  nevertheless,  better  furnished  with  intel- 
lectual power  than  he  appears  to  have  believed.  "From 
my  earliest  youth,"  he  writes,  "I  have  had  the  strongest 
desire  to  understand  or  explain  whatever  I  observed,  that 
is,  to  group  all  facts  under  some  general  laws."  It  is 
true  that  he  started  from  some  specific  facts,  had  a  defi- 
nite, tangible  problem  to  solve;  but  he  felt  the  necessity 
to  solve  it.  He  differed  from  the  collector  in  this,  that 
his  curiosity  was  not  exhausted  in  gathering  materials, 


DARWIN'S   LIFE  109 

but  he  must  also  order  his  materials;  or  to  put  it 
exactly,  must  organize  his  knowledge.  This  shows  the 
great  vitality  of  his  reasoning  faculty,  which  within  its 
special  range  was  really  precocious.  The  native  strength 
of  his  mind  in  this  direction  is  also  illustrated  by  the  great 
pleasure  he  derived  from  reading  Paley's  "Evidences." 
"The  logic  of  this  book,"  he  declares,  "and,  as  I  may 
add,  of  his  'Natural  Theology/  gave  me  as  much  delight 
as  did  Euclid.  The  careful  study  of  these  works,  with- 
out attempting  to  learn  any  part  by  rote,  was  the  only 
part  of  the  academical  course  which,  as  I  then  felt  and 
as  I  still  believe,  was  of  the  least  use  to  me  in  the  edu- 
cation of  my  mind.  I  did  not  at  that  time  trouble  myself 
about  Paley's  premises;  and  taking  these  in  trust,  I  was 
charmed  and  convinced  by  the  long  line  of  argumenta- 
tion." He  acknowledges  his  inability  in  later  life  to 
follow  trains  of  abstract  reasoning,  such  as  make  the 
matter  of  metaphysics;  but  he  was  quite  aware  of  his 
aptitude  for  inductive  reasoning,  and  does  not  overesti- 
mate its  influence  in  the  composition  of  his  great  work. 
"Some  of  my  critics  have  said,  'Oh,  he  is  a  good  observer, 
but  he  has  no  power  of  reasoning ! '  I  do  not  think  that 
this  can  be  true,  for  the  'Origin  of  Species'  is  one  long 
argument  from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  and  it  has  con- 
vinced not  a  few  able  men."  His  taste  for  collecting  was 
a  sine  qua  non,  but  it  was  this  power  of  reasoning, 
however  limited  in  range,  that  made  him  great;  and  it 
is  as  clearly  to  be  seen  in  operation  in  his  formative  years 
as  was  the  passion  for  collecting  which  was  to  feed  it 
with  material  to  work  upon.  His  vivacity  and  energy 
no  doubt  counted  much  in  winning  for  him  the  friendship 
of  elder  men,  and  he  possessed  that  indefinable  but 
potent  quality  of  personal  attractiveness:  but  Henslow 


no  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

in  the  beginning,  as  Lyell  later,  must  have  seen  in  him 
that  happy  conjunction  of  tastes  and  faculties  which 
made  his  genius  for  science,  or  at  least  they  must  have 
perceived  the  promise  of  it. 

All  the  circumstances  of  his  life  seem  to  have  con- 
spired to  favor  this  special  endowment.  The  very  fact 
that  the  classics  did  nothing  for  him  helped  him:  he  was 
relieved  from  the  confusion  caused  by  complex  and 
disturbing  elements  in  a  varied  education;  he  had 
no  difficulty  in  making  his  choice;  he  was  not  after- 
ward drawn  aside  by  the  existence  of  other  unsatisfied 
tastes,  artificially  cultivated;  he  had  no  ambition  for 
that  roundness  of  development  which  is  a  fetich  of 
modern  times;  he  did  not  fritter  away  his  time  and  energy 
in  directions  in  which  he  could  not  excel.  It  is  not 
meant  to  hold  up  his  luck  in  this  respect  as  exemplary 
good  fortune,  but  only  to  emphasize  the  way  in  which 
it  told  on  his  success.  He  was  not  less  happy  in  the 
exterior  circumstances  of  his  life,  and  in  those  things 
which  come  by  a  kind  of  hazard.  His  appointment  to 
the  Beagle  was  a  Napoleonic  opportunity,  and  in  looking 
back  he  realized  its  value  to  the  full:  "The  voyage  of 
the  Beagle  has  been  by  far  the  most  important  event  in 
my  life,  and  has  determined  my  whole  career;  yet  it 
depended  on  so  small  a  circumstance  as  my  uncle  offer- 
ing to  drive  rrie  thirty  miles  to  Shrewsbury,  which  few 
uncles  would  have  done,  and  on  such  a  trifle  as  the  shape 
of  my  nose."  But  one  ought  not  to  exaggerate  the  ele- 
ment of  chance;  and  though  Captain  Fitz-roy  had  con- 
tinued to  disapprove  of  Darwin's  nose,  and  his  uncle  had 
not  interfered  to  overcome  the  elder  Darwin's  objection 
to  the  voyage  on  the  score  that  it  would  be  an  unbecom- 
ing adventure  for  a  prospective  clergyman,  and  on  other 


DARWIN'S   LIFE  in 

equally  good  or  better  grounds,  yet  we  might  have  had 
our  great  naturalist.  The  voyage  of  the  Beagle,  never- 
theless, was  the  turning-point  of  Darwin's  life.  He  ob- 
tained in  the  course  of  it  the  first  real  training  of  his 
mind;  it  brought  before  him  several  departments  of 
science  in  such  a  way  that  he  approached  them  with 
active  and  original  thoughts,  and  was  constantly  forced 
into  an  inquiring  and  bold  attitude  toward  the  novel 
material  he  found;  it  gave  him  five  years  alone  with 
science,  and  free  from  any  near  master  to  whom  he  might 
have  formed  the  habit  of  deferring.  Huxley  does  not 
overstate  the  material  advantages  that  this  training 
brought  with  it:  "In  Physical  Geography,  in  Geology 
proper,  in  Geographical  Distribution,  and  in  Paleontol- 
ogy, he  had  acquired  an  extensive  practical  training 
during  the  voyage  of  the  Beagle.  He  knew  of  his  own 
knowledge  the  way  in  which  the  raw  materials  of  these 
branches  of  science  are  acquired,  and  was  therefore  a 
most  competent  judge  of  the  speculative  strain  they  would 
bear.  That  which  he  needed,  after  his  return  to  Eng- 
land, was  a  corresponding  acquaintance  with  Anatomy 
and  Development,  and  their  relations  to  Taxonomy,  and 
he  acquired  this  by  his  Cirripede  work."  It  is  to  be 
noticed  that  during  his  voyage  in  the  Beagle  he  became 
convinced  of  the  "wonderful  superiority  of  LyelPs  man- 
ner of  treating  geology"  over  every  other  author's.  This 
is  an  illustration,  like  that  drawn  from  Paley,  of  the 
character  of  his  mind  as  primarily  a  reasoning  mind; 
for  what  he  recognized  in  Lyell  was  a  method.  It  was 
on  this  voyage,  too,  that  he  became  ambitious;  he  be- 
gan to  believe  that  he  might  add  to  the  stock  of  human 
knowledge,  and  the  stimulation  of  the  welcome  his  suc- 
cess was  meeting  in  England  was  evidently  keenly  felt. 


H2  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

He  put  his  whole  heart  into  the  work,  and  few  passages 
are  more  stirring  than  those  which  describe  his  zeal  in 
his  first  really  scientific  enthusiasm,  after  he  had  given 
up  his  gun  as  of  less  use  than  his  eye,  and  had  found 
sport,  even  with  his  fond  love  of  it,  an  inferior  pleasure 
to  the  pursuit  of  knowledge;  then,  alone  in  the  Andes 
and  the  Southern  Ocean,  he  came  to  his  majority. 

Mr.  Huxley,  in  the  passage  cited,  has  noted  the  need 
Darwin  had  for  further  training,  particularly  as  a  natu- 
ralist. He  obtained  this  by  his  work  on  the  Cirripedes, 
an  eight  years'  labor.  This  concluded  his  education. 
Of  the  value  of  it  merely  as  training  and  to  him- 
self, Sir  Joseph  Hooker  says:  "Your  father  recognized 
three  stages  in  his  career  as  a  biologist:  the  mere  col- 
lector at  Cambridge;  the  collector  and  observer  in  the 
Beagle,  and  for  some  years  afterwards;  and  the  trained 
naturalist  after,  and  only  after,  the  Cirripede  work. 
That  he  was  a  thinker  all  along  is  true  enough."  Hux- 
ley says  that  Darwin  never  did  a  wiser  thing  than  when 
he  devoted  himself  to  these  years  of  patient  toil.  Dar- 
win himself  does  not  indicate  that  he  purposely  chose 
to  do  this  monograph  in  order  to  educate  himself,  and  he 
doubts  whether  it  was  worth  the  time.  He  seems  to  have 
been  gradually  drawn  into  it,  and  to  have  finished  it 
because  he  had  gone  so  far.  When  he  had  done  with 
it,  at  any  rate,  if  not  before,  he  was  a  thoroughly  fur- 
nished man  for  such  investigation  as  was  to  be  his  title 
to  lasting  fame.  He  had  come  to  be  thus  equipped  by 
the  mere  course  of  his  life;  by  beetles  at  Cambridge,  and 
the  Beagle,  and  the  Cirripedes.  Yet  if  he  had  planned 
his  education  from  the  start  for  the  express  purpose  of 
dealing  in  the  most  masterly  way  with  the  mass  of  diversi- 
fied details  out  of  which  the  "Origin  of  Species"  and  the 


DARWIN'S   LIFE  113 

other  derivative  coordinate  works  grew,  it  is  hard  to  see 
in  what  way  his  course  could  have  been  improved.  The 
ill-health  which  seized  him  so  soon  was  almost  a  blessing 
in  disguise,  since  it  isolated  him  from  the  distractions 
of  modern  London,  made  him  value  his  life  and  his  time, 
and  possibly,  by  the  economy  of  his  strength  which  it 
necessitated,  aided  as  much  as  it  hindered  him. 

One  need  not  follow  him  through  the  composition  of 
his  books,  or  even  through  the  elaboration  of  the  theory 
of  natural  selection,  during  the  many  years  that  it  was 
growing  in  his  laboratory  of  notes.  For  him  the  formu- 
lating of  that  theory  was  inevitable:  it  seems,  as  one  ob- 
serves him,  natural  enough  to  have  been  foretold  of  him; 
but  it  followed,  not  from  his  position,  which  another 
man  might  have  occupied,  but  from  his  genius.  The 
qualities  of  mind  which  it  required  were  not  many,  and 
one  understands  readily  why  it  is  so  commonly  said  that 
all  is  explained  by  his  power  of  observation  and  its  vast 
range;  but  it  did  require  one  high  faculty  of  the  mind, 
and  a  rare  one,  which  Darwin  had  preeminently  among 
the  men  of  his  time  —  the  faculty,  namely,  of  discerning 
the  lines  of  inquiry  in  a  mass  of  as  yet  unrelated  facts. 
He  somewhere  says  that  he  had  found  it  harder,  perhaps, 
to  put  the  question  than  it  was  to  reach  the  answer.  This 
power  is  the  great  economizer  of  mental  energy,  in  any 
branch  of  investigation;  it  is,  to  the  man  who  has  it, 
equivalent  to  a  compass;  and  to  Darwin  it  was  the  one 
talent  without  which  his  stores  of  knowledge  would  have 
been  no  more  than  a  heap  of  unclassified  specimens  in  a 
museum  cellar.  Moral  and  physical  qualities  he  had,  be- 
sides; his  patience  and  his  practised  vision  were  invalu- 
able; but  it  was  the  intellectual  part  that  penetrated  the 
secrets  of  nature.  This  sense  of  the  problem,  this  eye 


ii4  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

for  the  question,  was  most  serviceable  to  his  success.  His 
acuteness  in  perceiving  the  importance  of  the  infinitely 
little,  which  is  often  mentioned  as  one  of  his  distinguish- 
ing traits,  was  only  an  incident  of  this  larger  endowment; 
and  his  power  to  make  other  men  useful  to  him,  specialists 
in  horticulture  or  physiology,  or  even  common  observing 
men,  was  only  the  knowledge  of  how  to  put  practical 
questions.  The  point  is  worth  emphasizing,  because  in 
this  age  of  the  accumulation  of  scientific  detail  it  is  too 
apt  to  be  forgotten  that  the  thinking  mind  is  as  rare  in 
science  as  in  other  departments,  and  is,  nevertheless,  the 
indispensable  thing  which  makes  a  man  great. 

Here  it  is  worth  while  to  advert  to  that  persistent  dis- 
cussion respecting  the  nature  of  a  modern  education, 
which  Darwin's  experience  is  bound  to  bring  forward  with 
renewed  vigor.  His  testimony,  both  in  the  chart  of  him- 
self which  he  gave  Mr.  Galton  and  in  the  account  he 
wrote  for  his  children,  is  unequivocal.  He  says  he  was 
self-taught;  that  his  training  at  the  university  was  of  no 
use  to  him,  speaking  generally,  and  that  the  classics  in 
particular  were  barren.  He  seems  to  be  quite  correct 
in  his  statement;  the  claim  that  his  powers  of  observa- 
tion and  comparison  were  really  developed  by  schoolboy 
attention  to  Latin  and  Greek  terminations  is  purely  peda- 
gogical; nor  is  there  any  reason  to  question  that  men  of 
genius  can  be  successful,  achieve  eminent  greatness  for 
themselves,  and  do  work  of  the  highest  value  to  society 
without  immediate  obligation  to  those  studies  usually 
called  the  humanities.  This  is  nothing  new.  Instances 
of  self-education  for  special  careers  are  to  be  found  in 
other  walks  than  those  of  science:  in  war,  in  administra- 
tion, and  generally  in  active  life,  and  not  infrequently  in 
literature  itself.  But  it  is  worth  observing  what  testi- 


DARWIN'S   LIFE  115 

mony  these  volumes  bear  to  the  wonderful  vitality  of  the 
Greek  intelligence.  Speaking  of  the  theory  of  Pangen- 
esis,  Darwin  writes  to  a  correspondent  that  the  views  of 
Hippocrates  "seem  almost  identical  with  mine  —  merely 
a  change  of  terms,  and  an  application  of  them  to  classes 
of  facts  necessarily  unknown  to  the  old  philosopher." 
Again,  he  writes  of  Aristotle:  "From  quotations  which 
I  had  seen  I  had  a  high  notion  of  Aristotle's  merits,  but 
I  had  not  the  most  remote  notion  what  a  wonderful 
man  he  was.  Linnaeus  and  Cuvier  have  been  my  two 
gods,  though  in  very  different  ways,  but  they  were  mere 
schoolboys  to  old  Aristotle.  ...  I  never  realized,  be- 
fore reading  your  book,  to  what  an  enormous  consum- 
mation of  labor  we  owe  even  our  common  knowledge."  A 
more  striking  passage  is  that  of  Huxley's,  where  he  says : 
"The  oldest  of  all  philosophies,  that  of  evolution,  was 
bound  hand  and  foot  and  cast  into  utter  darkness  dur- 
ing the  millennium  of  theological  scholasticism.  But 
Darwin  poured  new  lifeblood  into  the  ancient  frame; 
the  bonds  burst,  and  the  revivified  thought  of  ancient 
Greece  has  proved  itself  to  be  a  more  adequate  expres- 
sion of  the  universal  order  of  things  than  any  of  the 
schemes  which  have  been  accepted  by  the  credulity  and 
welcomed  by  the  superstition  of  seventy  later  genera- 
tions of  men."  Rediscovery,  however,  is  not  obligation; 
and,  perhaps,  if  Darwin  had  been  thoroughly  imbued 
with  the  Greek  mode  of  looking  upon  the  universe,  he 
would  not  have  been  really  indebted  to  it  for  his  own 
views;  for  he  went  upon  different  grounds  in  forming 
his  conceptions.  The  real  question  is,  not  whether  Dar- 
win succeeded  without  Greek  influences,  but  whether 
he  lost  anything  because  of  his  failure  to  assimilate 
them.  The  answer  seems  plain.  It  is  written  all  over 


i6  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

these  pages,  and  is  expressly  given  by  Darwin  in  more 
than  one  passage. 

No  words  can  be  too  strong  to  express  the  lovableness 
of  Darwin's  personality,  or  the  moral  beauty  of  his 
character.  In  his  biography,  it  is  true,  he  is  presented 
as  the  man  of  science;  but  he  is  seen  occasionally  in  other 
aspects.  He  was  a  dutiful,  respectful,  and  affectionate 
son,  at  the  outset  of  his  life.  He  thought  his  father  was 
sometimes  unjust,  but  he  always  spoke  of  him  as  "the 
wisest  man  he  ever  knew";  and  there  is  a  touching  pas- 
sage in  one  of  his  letters  home,  when  his  father  had  sent 
him  a  note:  "I  almost  cried  for  pleasure  at  receiving  it; 
it  was  very  kind,  thinking  of  writing  to  me."  He  was 
also,  in  his  turn,  an  admirable  father,  considerate,  patient, 
and  very  tender.  One  of  his  sons  tells  a  most  significant 
anecdote  of  once  having  drawn  on  himself  some  indignant 
exclamation,  "almost  with  fury,"  and  the  end  of  it  be- 
ing that  "next  morning,  at  seven  o'clock  or  so,  he  came 
into  my  bed-room  and  sat  on  my  bed,  and  said  he  had 
not  been  able  to  sleep,  from  the  thought  that  he  had 
been  so  angry  with  me,  and  after  a  few  more  kind  words 
he  left  me."  His  description  of  his  little  daughter  who 
died  is  of  itself  enough  to  show  the  extraordinarily  fine 
quality  of  his  affections;  and  in  general  his  relations  with 
his  children  are  almost  ideal  in  gentleness,  kindness,  and 
companionableness.  He  was  also  a  good  friend  and 
acquaintance.  In  a  word,  in  his  private  social  rela- 
tions he  was  exemplary,  judged  by  the  standard  of  a 
high  civilization.  He  was  not  without  a  sense,  too,  of 
public  duty.  He  felt  strongly  only  upon  the  subject  of 
slavery,  and  this  was  largely  because  of  his  travels  in 
slave  countries.  He  was  interested  in  philanthropic 
efforts  to  some  degree,  and  especially  in  furthering 


DARWIN'S   LIFE  117* 

the  increase  of  kindness  to  animals.  But  he  was  re- 
mote from  public  affairs,  and  led  even  in  his  sympathies 
a  life  somewhat  narrowly  confined  to  his  own  circle  and 
his  work  in  science.  In  other  parts  of  his  character 
there  is  nothing  to  displease.  He  was  modest  and  just, 
and  free  from  envy,  conscientious  to  an  extreme,  and 
as  ready  to  give  as  to  receive  help  in  all  ways.  He  was 
more  pleased  with  his  fame  than  he  acknowledged;  he 
cared  deeply  for  the  success  of  his  theory,  and  was  well 
aware  of  its  influence  on  his  own  reputation  as  one  to 
be  classed  with  Newton's;  he  liked  praise  and  distinc- 
tion, though  he  limited  his  desire  to  the  commendation 
and  respect  of  naturalists;  but  this  is  only  to  wish  to  be 
approved  by  the  most  competent  judges.  He  was  fair 
to  Wallace,  and  exhibited  the  best  of  tempers  toward 
him;  but  between  the  lines  one  reads  that  he  was  nettled 
and  annoyed  by  the  incident,  and  it  must  be  concluded 
that  as  he  was  ambitious  in  youth,  he  was  desirous  of 
having  his  due  in  manhood,  and  valued  fame. 

This  was  a  character  which  might  well  spare  the 
humanities.  The  fact  remains  that  he  did  spare  them. 
What  he  lost  was  culture.  The  confession  that  he  makes 
of  the  gradual  atrophy  of  his  esthetic  tastes  will  be  long 
quoted  as  one  of  the  most  remarkable  facts  of  his  life. 
He  began  with  a  susceptibility  to  music,  which  by  his 
son's  account  he  did  not  lose;  with  a  liking  for  poetry, 
such  that  he  read  "The  Excursion"  twice,  and  he  would 
not  have  read  it  except  for  pleasure;  and  he  used  to  take 
Milton  with  him  in  his  pocket.  In  art  he  went  but  a 
little  way,  if,  indeed,  he  ever  really  had  any  eye  for  it. 
He  was  religious,  as  an  English  boy  usually  is;  but  his 
interest  in  belief  regarding  religious  subjects  died  out,  and, 
what  is  of  more  consequence,  the  emotions  which  were 


n8  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

called  out  by  it  in  early  life  ceased  to  be  exercised. 
There  was  a  deadening,  in  other  words,  of  all  his  nature, 
except  so  far  as  it  was  fed  by  his  work,  his  family,  and 
his  friends  in  its  intellectual  and  social  parts.  So  com- 
plete was  this  change  that  it  affected  even  his  appreci- 
ation of  beautiful  scenery,  which  had  evidently  given 
him  keen  delight  in  his  youth  and  travels.  He  dates 
this  change  from  just  after  his  thirtieth  year,  when  he 
became  absorbed  in  scientific  pursuits  as  his  profession. 
Something,  no  doubt,  and  perhaps  much,  is  to  be  set 
down  to  the  effect  of  his  ill-health,  which  left  him  with 
diminished  energies  for  any  recreation;  his  strength  was 
exhausted  in  his  few  hours  of  work.  He  was  himself 
so  convinced  that  his  life  had  been  narrowed  in  these 
ways,  that  he  says  if  he  had  it  to  live  over  he  would 
have  planned  to  give  a  certain  time  habitually  to  poetry. 
It  would  be  too  much  to  say  that  the  failure  of  Darwin 
to  appropriate  the  humane  elements  in  his  university 
education  accounts  in  any  perceptible  degree  for  these 
defects.  In  culture,  as  in  science,  the  self-making  power 
of  the  man  counts  heavily;  and  there  is  such  ineffi- 
ciency in  those  whose  duty  it  is  to  give  youth  a  liberal 
education  from  classical  sources,  there  are  such  wrong 
methods  and  unintelligent  aims  in  the  universities,  that 
it  might  easily  prove  to  be  the  case  that  a  student  with 
the  most  cordial  temperament  toward  the  humanities 
would  profit  only  imperfectly  by  his  residence  at  seats  of 
learning.  In  spite  of  these  reservations  however,  the 
Greek  culture  is  the  historical  source  of  what  are  tradi- 
tionally the  higher  elements  in  our  intellectual  life,  and 
has  been  for  most  cultivated  men  the  practical  discipline 
of  their  minds.  But  it  is  to  be  further  observed  that  the 
example  of  Darwin,  if  it  should  be  set  up  as  showing 


DARWIN'S   LIFE  119 

that  Greek  culture  is  unnecessary  in  modern  days,  goes 
just  as  directly  and  completely  to  prove  that  all  literary 
education,  as  well  by  modern  as  by  ancient  authors,  is 
superfluous.  It  is  enough  to  indicate  to  what  a  length 
the  argument  must  be  carried,  if  it  is  at  all  admitted. 
The  important  matter  is  rather  the  question,  How  much 
was  Darwin's  life  injured  for  himself  by  his  loss  of 
culture,  in  the  fact  that  some  of  those  sources  of  intel- 
lectual delight  which  are  reputed  the  most  precious  for 
civilized  man  were  closed  to  him? 

The  blank  page  in  this  charming  biography  is  the 
page  of  spiritual  life.  There  is  nothing  written  there. 
The  entire  absence  of  an  element  which  enters  com- 
monly into  all  men's  lives  in  some  degree  is  a  circum- 
stance as  significant  as  it  is  astonishing.  Never  was  a 
man  more  alive  to  what  is  visible  and  tangible,  or  in 
any  way  matter  of  sensation;  on  the  sides  of  his  nature 
where  an  appeal  could  be  made,  never  was  a  man  more 
responsive;  but  there  were  parts  in  which  he  was  blind 
and  dull.  Just  as  the  boy  failed  to  be  interested  in  many 
things,  the  man  failed  too;  and  he  disregarded  what  did 
not  interest  him  with  the  same  ease  at  sixty  as  at 
twenty.  What  did  interest  him  was  the  immediately 
present,  and  he  dealt  with  it  admirably,  both  in  the  in- 
tellectual and  the  moral  world;  but  what  was  remote  was 
as  if  it  were  not.  The  spiritual  element  in  life  is  not 
remote,  but  it  is  not  matter  of  sensation,  and  Darwin 
lived  as  if  there  were  no  such  thing;  it  belongs  to  the 
region  of  emotion  and  imagination,  and  those  percep- 
tions which  deal  with  the  nature  of  man  in  its  contrast 
with  the  material  world.  Poetry,  art,  music,  the  emo- 
tional influences  of  nature,  the  idealizations  of  moral 
life,  are  the  means  by  which  men  take  possession  of  this 


120  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

inner  world  of  man;  to  which,  for  man  at  least,  nature 
in  all  its  immensity  is  subsidiary.  Darwin's  insensibil- 
ity to  the  higher  life  —  for  so  men  agree  to  call  it- 
was  partly,  if  not  wholly,  induced  by  his  absorption  in 
scientific  pursuits  in  the  spirit  of  materialism.  We  praise 
him  for  his  achievements,  we  admire  his  character,  and 
we  feel  the  full  charm  of  his  temperament;  he  delights  us 
in  every  active  manifestation  of  his  nature.  We  do  not 
now  learn  for  the  first  time  that  a  man  may  be  good  with- 
out being  religious,  and  successful  without  being  liberally 
educated,  and  worthy  of  honor  without  being  spiritual; 
but  a  man  may  be  all  this  and  yet  be  incomplete.  Great  as 
Darwin  was  as  a  thinker,  and  winning  as  he  remains  as 
a  man,  those  elements  in  which  he  was  deficient  are  the 
noblest  part  of  our  nature. 


DOBELL'S  LIFE  AND  LETTERS 

IT  was  no  fault  of  Sydney  Dobell  that  the  disparity 
between  the  excellence  of  his  rare  natural  gifts  and  the 
meagerness  of  their  literary  result  is  so  great,  for  the 
difficulties  which  beset  him  made  partial  failure  inev- 
itable. The  disastrous  nature  of  his  early  education  has 
seldom  been  paralleled  in  the  records  of  blighted  genius, 
and  in  manhood,  when  he  had  emancipated  himself  from 
it  to  some  degree,  successive  misfortunes  struck  down 
and  maimed  his  powers.  His  parents  were  members  of 
a  Church  which  had  been  founded  by  his  mother's 
father,  a  free-thinking  Christian  of  the  last  century,  to 
bring  about  a  return  to  the  apostolic  practice,  and  was 
thought  by  them  to  be  the  germ  of  a  great  religious  re- 
form. They  believed  that  Sydney,  their  first-born,  was 
the  chosen  instrument  of  God  for  this  work.  The  child 
was  precocious  in  mind  and  endowed  with  all  the  sus- 
ceptibility to  emotion  which  belongs  to  the  poetic  tempera- 
ment. Every  new  sign  of  intellectual  strength  or  reli- 
gious fervor  was  to  his  parents  a  fresh  proof  of  the 
boy's  divine  calling,  and  their  injudicious  zeal  stimu- 
lated a  development  which  would  have  been  abnormally 
rapid  under  the  best  care.  His  mission  was  instilled 
into  his  thoughts  when  he  was  four  years  old;  at  eight 
years  his  diary  is  filled  with  theology  and  his  waste-paper 
with  verses;  at  ten  he  falls  in  love;  at  twelve,  enters  his 
father's  office  and  begins  a  life  of  business  routine;  at 
fourteen  he  is  prostrated  with  nervous  fever;  at  fifteen, 

121 


122  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

is  engaged  to  be  married,  and  considering  the  publica- 
tion of  a  drama  on  Napoleon  which  he  had  written  and 
Campbell  had  read;  at  seventeen,  we  read  of  long-con- 
tinued and  exhausting  prayer;  eloquent  church  oratory 
follows;  at  twenty  he  is  married;  at  twenty-three  the 
blow  falls,  and  he  is  prostrated  with  a  nearly  fatal  dis- 
ease which  left  him  a  man  of  broken  health.  The 
history  of  these  years  is  given  scantily  in  these  volumes, 
but  there  are  many  indications  of  their  unnatural  life; 
his  father  says,  for  example,  that  in  his  delirium,  when 
the  sense  of  locality  and  the  memory  of  faces  were  lost, 
he  talked  rationally  on  moral  and  reflective  subjects; 
and  his  wife  says  of  their  courtship,  in  a  remark  of 
blended  humor  and  pathos,  "the  more  we  loved,  the  more 
we  prayed."  He  himself  gives  the  clearest  glimpse  of 
the  nervous  intoxication  of  his  boyhood  in  a  letter  to 
his  sister,  where  he  says,  "I  shall  not  cease  to  look  back 
on  the  four  or  five  years  preceding  my  illness  with  a 
kind  of  self-reverence  —  as  to  an  impossible  saintdom 
to  which  I  would  not  return,  but  which  I  can  never 
equal  on  this  side  the  grave.  I  see  that  I  have  a  wider 
mission  and  a  rougher  excellence  before  me;  but  I  can- 
not look  back  without  a  melancholy  interest  to  the  years 
when  I  never  thought  a  thought  or  said  a  word  but  under 
the  very  eyes  of  God."  Such  experience  necessarily  left 
indelible  traces;  the  practical  result  of  his  education  was 
a  physical  blow,  and  it  is  easy  to  observe  in  his  letters 
after  this  time  symptoms  of  lingering  disease,  as  when 
he  speaks  of  having  a  double  consciousness  of  locality, 
or  of  being  seized  by  spontaneous  trains  of  thought  of 
unusual  brilliance,  but  which  he  cannot  recollect  on  com- 
ing out  of  this  state. 
With  such  a  mind  and  body  he  began  his  literary 


DOBELL'S   LIFE   AND   LETTERS  123 

career,  against  the  remonstrance  of  his  parents,  who  still 
believed  in  his  apostolic  mission.  He  published  two 
dramas  which  have  passed  into  literature,  and  a  vol- 
ume of  war-lyrics.  He  was  contemplating  an  epic  on 
the  millennium  which  should  be  his  crowning  work,  and 
seems  to  have  looked  for  no  activity  in  any  other  field  than 
literature.  But  ten  years  of  writing,  study,  and  busi- 
ness, added  to  the  constant  and  wearying  care  of  an 
invalid  wife,  overcame  his  shaken  constitution,  and  at 
thirty-three  a  second  illness  practically  put  an  end  to 
his  career.  The  two  invalids  tried  all  climates  with  little 
success;  accident  followed  accident;  he  fell  into  a  Roman 
drain  and  injured  his  spine;  another  fall  from  his  horse 
nearly  proved  fatal;  relapse  followed  relapse  until  after 
seventeen  years,  "wherein,"  he  says,  "the  keen  percep- 
tion of  all  that  should  be  done,  and  that  so  bitterly  cries 
for  doing,  accompanies  the  consciousness  of  all  I  might 
but  cannot  do,"  he  died  in  1874. 

Such  warping  and  blighting  influences  made  Sydney 
DobelPs  public  service  fall  so  far  short  of  his  ex- 
traordinary capacities  as  to  amount  practically  to  fail- 
ure. His  senses  were  abnormally  acute,  like  those  of  a 
savage,  and  this  made  his  appreciation  of  natural  love- 
liness remarkably  keen;  his  powers  of  imagination  and 
sympathy  and  his  supersubtle  reflective  faculty  com- 
pleted his  poetic  endowment.  The  bent  of  his  mind,  the 
surcharging  of  his  soul  with  religious  emotion  and  mys- 
tical feeling,  led  him  sometimes  into  that  region  of  dreamy 
poetic  conjecture  with  which  readers  of  the  transcen- 
dentalists  are  familiar,  where  the  object,  too  vague  for 
thought,  is  grasped  at  through  symbols,  and  the  quali- 
ties of  the  symbol  extended  fancifully  to  the  unknown 
object.  This,  for  example,  reads  like  an  excerpt  from 


124  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

Novalis:  "What  if  the  visible  universe  stand  in  the  rela- 
tion to  the  Divine  of  the  brain  to  the  human  soul;  hu- 
manity upon  its  surface  answering  to  the  cineritious 
matter;  these  past  six  thousand  years  a  passing  illness 
of  the  Eternal  Nature,  and  its  scheme  of  salvation  and 
ultimate  golden  issue  a  process  of  Divine  physiology?" 
It  is  not  often  that  he  gets  so  far  off  his  feet  as  in  this 
passage.  Here  is  one  of  mystical  suggestion,  which  in 
a  letter  to  Charlotte  Bronte  he  says  was  struck  out  of 
an  article  by  the  sapient  editor  of  the  "Eclectic":  "Yea, 
O  divine  earth!  O  incommunicable  beauty!  wearing 
thy  crown  of  thorns  and  having  on  the  purple  robes  of 
immemorial  sunsets,  we  have  parted  thy  garments  among 
us,  and  for  thy  vesture  have  we  cast  lots";  and  he 
is  led  to  this  0  altitudo!  because  he  has  thrown  down 
his  pen  "helpless  before  this  unapproachable  world," 
and  the  unapproachable  world  was  merely  apple-trees  in 
blossom  —  "the  very  Avalon  of  apple-trees  that  makes 
an  awful  rose  of  dawn  toward  the  east."  Such  was  the 
fervor  and  intensity  of  his  poetic  moods.  On  more 
prosaic  ground  he  could  be  sensible  enough,  but  his  prej- 
udices were  sometimes  very  curious.  "Aurora  Leigh" 
he  thought  no  poem  because  written  by  a  woman,  and 
he  held  "all  feminine  literature  to  be  an  error  and  an 
anomaly."  To  a  sister  he  writes:  "The  passion  of  writ- 
ing, especially  among  ladies,  is  the  mental  and  spiritual 
nuisance  of  this  age.  What  the  young  people  of  the 
day  want  to  learn  is  that  authorship,  unless  it  be  of  the 
very  best  —  the  best  and  most  competent  minds  expressed 
in  the  very  best  ways  —  is  worse  than  useless";  and  again, 
to  resist  "a  temptation  which  bids  fair  to  stain  with  ink 
the  sweetest  sanctuaries  of  life,  and  taint  with  the  in- 
evitable evils  of  every  unnatural  and  abnormal  gratifica- 


DOBELL'S   LIFE   AND   LETTERS  125 

tion  three-fourths  of  the  women  of  England."  Toward  the 
theory  of  women's  rights  and  the  theory  of  the  equality  of 
men  he  was  extremely  hostile;  but  in  politics,  in  which  he 
interested  himself  much,  he  was  in  enthusiastic  sympathy 
with  the  Liberals.  We  read  with  wicked  pleasure  the 
letter  in  which  he  says  he  spent  an  hour  walking  in  his 
garden,  and  repeating  "the  damnation  of  hell"  after 
hearing  that  Mazzini  was  entrapped  in  Nuremberg,  and 
With  amusement  the  account  of  how  Victor  Emmanuel 
lost  a  present  of  one  of  the  poet's  dogs  because  he  im- 
prisoned Garibaldi.  He  had  many  interests  —  a  man 
of  business  all  his  life  as  well  as  a  poet  and  orator,  a 
liberal  as  well  as  an  aristocrat,  the  broadest  of  Broad 
Churchmen  as  well  as  an  earnest  Christian,  a  lover  of 
horses  and  dogs,  used  to  the  saddle,  the  gun,  and  the 
rod;  he  was  the  most  affable  as  well  as  the  most  merci- 
less of  critics,  and  he  was  the  dearest  of  friends.  Vari- 
ously developed  in  these  and  many  other  directions,  he 
saved  much  from  the  wreck;  his  private  life  evinces 
throughout  a  refined  and  noble  character.  He  was  a 
gentleman  of  the  highest  type,  who  made  the  most  valu- 
able acquisitions  in  life  and  shared  them  as  widely  as 
he  could,  who  united  grace  of  action  in  doing  a  thing 
to  "the  beauty  of  reason  or  feeling  that  causes  it  to  be 
done";  he  used  to  say,  "To  do  the  useful  is  the  tenure 
by  which  we  hold  this  world,  to  have  done  it  beautifully 
the  condition  of  our  transit  to  a  better,"  and  called  at- 
tention repeatedly  to  "that  moral  truth  still  older  than 
formularized  religion  —  that  relation  between  the  chari- 
table heart  and  the  idealizing  eye,  which  the  earliest 
Greeks  unconsciously  asserted  when  they  entitled  the 
Graces  the  Charities."  To  see  how  these  principles 
found  harmonious  expression  in  a  daily  life  of  such  pain 


126  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

and  disappointment  mitigates  the  sense  of  wasteful  loss 
which  these  memoirs  arouse;  his  poetry  is  un wrought 
ore,  his  published  prose  stray  leaves  of  thought,  but  in 
himself  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  he  came  near  to  his 
own  conception  of  the  poet's  ideal  life:  "Thou  wert  the 
courteousest  knight  that  ever  bore  shield;  thou  wert  the 
truest  friend  that  ever  bestrode  horse;  thou  wert  the 
truest  lover  that  ever  loved  woman;  thou  wert  the  kind- 
est man  that  ever  struck  with  sword;  thou  wert  the  good- 
liest person  that  ever  came  among  press  of  knights; 
thou  wert  the  meekest  man  and  the  gentlest  that  ever 
ate  in  hall  with  ladies;  and  thou  wert  the  sternest  knight 
to  thy  mortal  foe  that  ever  laid  lance  in  rest." 


WILLIAM  BARNES,  THE  DORSETSHIRE 

POET 

WILLIAM  BARNES  belongs  to  a  most  interesting  class 
of  self-made  men,  who,  with  exceptional  faculties,  make 
themselves  marked  persons,  but  yet  rise  little,  if  at  all, 
from  their  original  place  among  the  people.  Such  a  one 
was  our  Elihu  Burritt,  whom  Barnes  recalls  by  his  special 
aptitude  for  languages;  such  are  those  workingmen  of 
whom  we  hear  from  time  to  time  by  the  report  of  some 
Ruskin  who  has  discovered  them,  who  have  a  native 
taste  for  botany  or  geology,  or  it  may  be  poetry.  They 
are  distinguished  rather  in  their  class  than  among  the 
intellectual  group  with  which,  had  they  been  more  fortu- 
nately born  and  placed,  they  would  have  been  naturally 
associated.  Barnes  was  an  unusual  example  of  the 
type.  He  met  with  more  success,  and  actually  rose  in 
social  station;  but  he  had  the  stamp  of  his  country 
origin  strongly  impressed  on  him,  and  he  never  ceased 
to  be  thoroughly  a  man  of  the  people  from  whom  he 
sprang.  He  is  of  interest,  also,  as  an  excellent  speci- 
men of  the  sort  of  "original"  which  we  appropriate  too 
exclusively  to  our  own  nation;  he  possessed  the  versatil- 
ity, the  knack,  the  tool-using  faculty,  and  the  mental 
curiosity  that  we  associate  with  the  Yankee  character, 
and  his  biography  has  the  double  worth  of  a  life  active 
in  mind  and  in  work. 

He  came  of  farmer  stock  in  Dorset,  but  in  his  baby- 
hood he  had  not  the  physical  vigor  and  frame  that  ought 

127 


i28  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

to  be  the  birthright  of  one  destined  to  be  a  farm-hand. 
It  is  related  that  some  wise  old  woman  comforted  his 
mother  with  the  remark,  "Never  you  mind  what  he  looks 
like,  he'll  get  his  living  by  learning-books  and  such  like." 
He  had  some  schooling,  and  was  early  put  at  a  clerk's 
desk  in  solicitors'  offices,  where  his  good  penmanship 
saved  him  from  holding  a  plough,  and,  as  he  spent  his 
leisure  in  acquiring  knowledge  from  books,  he  early  set 
up  a  school,  and  throve  so  well  that  he  married  in  1827 
and  took  a  larger  house  for  himself  and  his  pupils.  He 
had  the  success  he  deserved,  and,  eight  years  later,  finally 
settled  in  Dorchester,  with  which  place  his  name  and 
labors  were  closely  associated  during  his  active  years. 
He  had  already  shown  the  variety  of  his  tastes  by  en- 
graving wood-blocks,  not  with  much  talent,  but  for 
publication,  nevertheless,  and  he  had  written  verses  in 
the  newspapers.  He  made  himself  acquainted  with 
many  languages  —  Welsh  and  Hindustanee  among  the 
rest  —  and  had  begun  his  philological  studies.  Being  dis- 
contented with  the  text-books  used  in  his  school,  he 
wrote  an  arithmetic,  a  geography,  and  a  grammar  for 
the  use  of  his  pupils,  upon  what  he  thought  better  prin- 
ciples. He  became  a  principal  founder  of  the  Dorset 
Museum,  and  took  his  boys  out  on  scientific  walks  as  a 
part  of  their  education,  and  also  to  get  specimens  in  the 
newly  opened  railway  cuttings.  He  was  an  antiquarian, 
too,  and  took  a  leading  part  in  the  Society  which  ex- 
amined and  speculated  about  British  and  Roman  re- 
mains; and,  to  mention  a  few  other  of  his  multi- 
farious employments,  be  painted  doors  "artistically," 
as  well  as  drew  in  water-color,  made  boxes,  invented 
a  pair  of  swimming-shoes  which  would  not  work,  turned 
his  own  chessmen  on  a  lathe,  produced  a  quadrant  and 


WILLIAM    BARNES  129 

an  instrument  to  describe  ellipses,  and  played  the  flute, 
violin,  and  piano.  He  had  the  fixed  habit  of  bringing 
his  notions  to  practical  forms,  and  is  found  regulating 
the  binding  of  his  books  and  the  margin  and  frames  of 
his  water-colors  by  "harmonic  proportions";  and,  to  give 
one  capital  instance  which  does  as  well  as  any  to  put 
this  aspect  of  his  character  before  us,  he  adopted  the 
theory  that  Nature  never  makes  mistakes  in  colors,  and 
that  her  juxtapositions  must  be  the  true  harmonies,  act- 
ing on  which,  he  studied  mosses,  leaves,  and  fruits,  and 
used  the  tints  as  arranged  in  them  in  his  own  sketching 
and  decoration.  Thus,  on  purchasing  two  old  high- 
backed  chairs,  he  chose  for  their  covering  "a  certain  gray- 
green  damask,  with  a  yellow-brown  binding,  the  tints 
found  on  the  upper  and  under  side  of  a  beautiful  lichen." 
He  had  determined  in  the  midst  of  all  this  on  entering 
the  church;  and  in  1837  put  himself  down  on  the  books 
of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  as  a  ten  years'  man. 
At  the  end  of  that  time,  having  meanwhile  been  a  pro- 
lific author  in  the  magazines  and  in  books,  he  received  a 
small  cure  of  £13  value,  three  miles  from  his  school, 
and  held  it  for  five  years,  walking  out  and  back  every 
Sunday.  His  life  went  on  in  this  way  with  teaching 
and  preaching,  philology,  antiquities,  lectures  in  the  coun- 
try, a  diary  in  all  languages,  and  poems  in  dialect,  which 
had  always  been  popular  in  the  district  and  slowly  at- 
tracted the  attention  of  literary  men  at  London.  But 
hard  times  came  to  him,  his  wife  was  dead  (in  his 
polyglot  journal  he  wrote  her  name  at  the  end  of  each 
day's  entry  for  forty  years  afterwards),  his  school  de- 
clined, and  it  was  a  matter  of  rejoicing  when  Palmerston 
put  him  on  the  civil  list  with  £70  pension.  At  last, 
when  his  friend  Colonel  Darner  gave  him  the  living  at 


130  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

Came  in  1862,  he  found  a  home  for  his  old  age,  and 
congenial  employment  until  his  death  in  1886.  As  a 
rector  he  was  much  beloved,  and  went  in  and  out  among 
his  people  like  one  of  them.  His  daughter  tells  of  a 
woman  saying  to  her,  "There,  miss,  we  do  all  of  us  love 
the  passon,  that  we  do;  he  be  so  plain.  Why,  bless  you, 
I  don't  no  more  mind  telling  o'  un  all  my  little  pains 
and  troubles  than  if  he  was  my  grandmother.  I  don't 
mean  any  disrespec',  miss";  and  this  story  tells  its  own 
tale.  He  remained  vigorous  until  near  the  end,  and 
died  in  advanced  age  with  the  honor  of  the  people  among 
whom  he  lived  and  the  respect  of  those  in  the  larger  world 
who  knew  his  acquirements  and  talents. 

But  his  biography  was  written  because  he  was  a  poet. 
The  name  philologist  is  also  upon  the  title-page;  his 
philological  work,  however,  was  cumbrous,  and  had  in  it 
elements  of  crankiness.  It  consisted  of  numberless 
writings,  some  of  which  brought  him  £5  for  the  copy- 
right, and  some  of  which  have  never  found  a  publisher 
at  all.  The  opera  major  a  in  these  are  a  "Universal 
Grammar  of  all  Languages,"  an  attempt  at  a  rational 
formal  analysis  of  speech  which  shall  be  true  of  each 
particular  tongue  or  dialect;  and  secondly,  'Tiw/  an 
analytical  scheme  of  roots  and  stems.  He  had  also 
much  at  heart  the  reform  of  the  English  by  eliminating 
all  except  Teutonic  elements,  and  restoring  to  it  such 
purity  as  the  Welsh  possesses;  his  practice  of  using  in 
his  later  books  only  pure  Teutonic  words,  numbers  of 
which  he  was  of  course  obliged  to  coin,  with  his  habit  of 
using  figure-symbols,  made  them  unreadable.  Such  are 
the  traits  of  his  philology.  But  his  feeling  for  the  plain 
and  expressive  quality,  the  homeliness,  of  country  speech, 
to  which  his  philological  dreams  were  allied,  is  at  the 


WILLIAM    BARNES  131 

root  of  his  extraordinary  success  as  a  poet  in  dialect. 
At  the  importunity  of  friends  he  translated  some  of  these 
Dorset  idyls  into  ordinary  English  speech,  and  the  vol- 
ume had  little  success  —  quite  rightly,  for  the  charm 
was  gone.  In  his  English  verses  he  did  not  exceed  com- 
monplace. His  poetic  inspiration  refused  to  flow  except 
from  the  living  rock  of  the  speech  of  the  country  folk 
which  had  been  familiar  to  his  childhood.  There  is  in 
all  real  dialect  verse  a  certain  correspondence  of  the 
feeling  and  the  words,  a  fitness  as  inexplicable  as  that 
of  a  peasant's  costume  to  his  body,  an  adjustment  of 
thought  and  burring  inflections  as  perfect  as  is  made  in 
all  things  by  use  and  wont;  and  this  is  the  main  element 
of  their  delight  to  the  cultivated.  All  are  reaches  after 
harmony,  but  here  is  a  harmony  that  seems  before  art, 
and  comes  to  us  like  unbreathed-on  nature.  The  pe- 
culiar forms  are  easily  caught  and  understood,  and  they 
give  the  tang  of  life  to  the  country  manners  which  they 
are  used  to  describe,  to  the  simple  sentiment  and  direct 
emotion  which  they  convey. 

Barnes  had  poetic  feeling  of  the  primitive  kind,  and 
so  long  as  he  dealt  with  this  Dorset  life  that  was  interest- 
ing and  dear  to  him,  and  used  its  own  century-molded 
vital  speech,  he  wrote  verses  with  a  quality  like  the 
charm  of  a  pastoral  picture  or  the  sight  of  the  cows 
in  the  pool  staring  at  you.  These  poems  won  him  the 
attention  of  some  London  folk  —  Mrs.  Norton  among 
them,  and  a  Mr.  Tennant,  whose  letters  to  him  are  most 
pleasant  in  tact  and  temper;  and  after  a  while  Patmore 
and  Allingham  became  his  friends,  and  Tennyson  ex- 
changed visits  with  him.  It  is  said  here  that  the 
"Northern  Farmer"  was  written  under  the  stimulus  of 
this  incident.  Palgrave  praised  Barnes  very  highly. 


132  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

"This  aged  poet  seems  to  me  to  stand  second  only  to 
Tennyson  in  the  last  half  century.  He  has  a  truth 
united  always  to  beauty  in  his  drawing  of  character  and 
country  ways  —  a  pure  love  of  nature,  such  as  one  sees  in 
the  best  Greek  or  Roman  writers,  exalted  and  rendered 
more  tender  by  his  devout  Christian  spirit.  I  know  not, 
also,  if  any  of  our  poets  have  surpassed  him  in  the 
number  of  original  pictures  or  motives  which  his  three 
precious  volumes  display."  There  is  something  of  the 
over-exquisite  critic  in  this,  but  it  should  be  said  that 
Palgrave  has  since  explained  that,  in  placing  Barnes 
"second  only  to  Tennyson,"  he  meant  to  class  him  "with, 
not  above,"  our  other  poets  "in  the  foremost  line  of 
those  after  Tennyson."  Still,  his  remarks  indicate  well 
enough  the  lines  of  Barnes's  excellence.  The  Bishop 
praised  rather  the  influence  of  his  life  and  words  in  his 
community:  "He  has  helped  the  people  hereabouts  to 
feel  what  they  can  be  and  do."  To  write  verses  to  please 
Mr.  Palgrave's  nice  taste,  and  to  have  been  helpful  by 
them  to  the  humble  people  of  Dorset,  is  to  cover  a  wide 
reach  of  life,  one  thinks;  it  is  a  test  of  the  singleness 
and  simplicity  of  poetic  art. 

He  was  always  eccentric,  it  seems,  in  dress.  The 
poncho,  the  plaid,  the  flowing  cassock,  and  silver  buckles 
served  in  turn,  but  he  was  especially  fond  of  a  red  cap, 
and  perhaps  it  was  a  favorite  color  in  other  articles; 
at  least  it  flashes  out  finely  in  this  sketch  of  him  by  Mr. 
Gosse  in  a  letter  to  Patmore: 

"Hardy  and  I  went  on  Monday  last  to  Came  Rectory, 
where  he  lies  bedridden.  It  is  curious  that  he  is  dying  as 
picturesquely  as  he  lived.  We  found  him  in  bed  in  his  study, 
his  face  turned  to  the  window,  where  the  light  came  stream- 
ing in  through  flowering  paints,  his  brown  books  on  all  sides 


WILLIAM   BARNES  '133 

of  him  save  one,  the  wall  behind  him  hung  with  old  green 
tapestry.  He  had  a  scarlet  bedgown  on,  a  kind  of  soft  biretta 
of  red  wool  on  his  head,  from  which  his  long  white  hair 
escaped  on  to  the  pillow;  his  gray  beard  grown  very  long 
upon  his  breast;  his  complexion,  which  you  recollect  as  richly 
bronzed,  has  become  blanched  by  keeping  indoors,  and  is 
now  waxily  white  where  it  is  not  waxily  pink;  the  blue  eyes 
half  shut,  restless  under  languid  lids.  I  wish  I  could  paint 
for  you  the  strange  effect  of  this  old,  old  man,  lying  in  cardi- 
nal scarlet  in  his  white  bed,  the  only  bright  spot  in  the  gloom 
of  all  these  books." 


MR.  RUSKIN'S  EARLY  YEARS 

AN  interesting  article  might  be  written  upon  the  influ- 
ence of  the  novel  upon  modern  autobiography.  The 
novel  has,  indeed,  affected  literature  in  many  ways,  and 
been  felt  in  both  history  and  poetry;  but  the  taste  which 
it  has  bred  in  the  incidents  and  characters  of  ordinary 
life  has  given  a  great  extension  to  the  scope  of  a  man's 
account  of  his  own  career.  It  would  hardly  have  oc- 
curred to  our  elder  authors  to  delineate  their  parents  in 
the  way  that  Carlyle  drew  his  father  and  mother,  or  to 
introduce  into  their  reminiscences  finished  portraits  of 
any  persons  who  had  not  won  some  distinction.  Gib- 
bon's autobiography  is  a  capital  instance  of  a  life  told 
without  the  setting  which  has  now  become  usual;  it  has 
no  such  background.  In  the  papers  which  Ruskin  has 
written  about  his  early  years,  there  is  no  like  reserve. 
He  includes  in  them  his  family  and  all  his  relatives,  the 
home  acquaintances  and  business  partners,  the  clerks  of 
the  firm  and  the  servants  of  the  house,  his  companions 
and  valets;  the  work,  in  other  words,  is  conceived  in  the 
new  spirit  of  autobiography,  and  though  he  is  the  hero, 
there  are  a  host  of  minor  characters  and  a  crowd  of  triv- 
ial incidents  which  in  other  days  would  not  have  been 
thought  worthy  of  record.  It  appeals  often,  like  the 
novel,  to  our  interest  in  general  life  as  much  as  to  our 
curiosity  about  Ruskin  in  his  distinct  personality. 

In  these  pages,  too,  Ruskin  is  an  ungrown  youth; 
his  account  hardly  touches  on  his  active  career,  and 

135 


136  LITERARY  MEMOIRS 

nowhere  reaches  his  maturity.  The  formative  years  of 
life  are,  in  a  sense,  very  important,  but  they  are  at  best 
only  the  preface;  what  the  man  at  last  became  and  ac- 
complished is  the  matter  that  is  worth  knowing,  unless 
one  is  specially  concerned  with  education;  the  question 
how  he  was  developed  is  subsidiary.  The  narrative  is 
much  taken  up  with  childish  and  futile  things,  and  does 
not  show  the  sources  of  Ruskin's  genius,  but  the  con- 
ditions under  which  he  grew;  and  these  were  such  as  to 
account  more  for  his  defects  than  his  excellences.  A 
great  part  of  what  is  told  is  indeed  entirely  irrelevant, 
and  would  have  been  as  interesting  in  any  other  man's 
life.  One  or  two  leading  topics,  however,  may  be  chosen, 
which  have  most  bearing  on  his  qualities,  and  either  illus- 
trate his  temperament,  or  seem  to  have  been  determining 
factors  in  his  character;  and  the  principal  of  these  is  his 
religious  training.  Ruskin  himself  lays  great  stress  on 
the  fact  that  his  mother  made  him  early  acquainted 
with  the  Bible;  she  read  it  with  him  for  years,  and  went 
through  it  in  course  several  times,  besides  obliging  him 
to  commit  chapters  of  it,  and  the  Scotch  versions  of  the 
psalms  in  addition.  He  was,  as  one  would  say,  piously 
trained;  the  exercise  was  strenuous  while  it  lasted,  and 
it  ended  only  with  his  fourteenth  year.  He  thinks  it 
formed  and  confirmed  a  taste  for  the  noble  element  in 
style,  and  that  it  was  also  morally  of  great  effect.  He 
was  an  only  child,  and  a  solitary  one;  this,  no  doubt,  had 
an  influence  in  lending  solemnity  to  his  religious  asso- 
ciations, and  his  beliefs  were  not  early  disturbed.  When 
he  went  to  Oxford,  the  steady  Bible-reading  had  ended, 
and  in  its  place,  he  says,  "was  substituted  my  own  pri- 
vate reading  of  a  chapter  morning  and  evening,  and  of 
course  saying  the  Lord's  Prayer  after  it,  and  asking  for 


MR.   RUSKIN'S   EARLY   YEARS  137 

everything  that  was  nice  for  myself  and  my  family; 
after  which  I  waked  or  slept,  without  much  thought  of 
anything  but  my  earthly  affairs,  whether  by  night  or  day. 
It  had  never  entered  into  my  head  to  doubt  a  word  of 
the  Bible,  though  I  saw  well  enough  already  that  its 
words  were  to  be  understood  otherwise  than  I  had  been 
taught;  but  the  more  I  believed  it,  the  less  it  did  me 
any  good.  It  was  all  very  well  for  Abraham  to  do  what 
angels  bid  him  —  so  would  I,  if  any  angels  bid  me;  but 
none  had  ever  appeared  to  me  that  I  knew  of,  not  even 
Adele,  who  couldn't  be  an  angel  because  she  was  a  Ro- 
man Catholic.  ...  On  the  whole,  it  seemed  to  me 
all  that  was  required  of  me  was  to  say  my  prayers,  go 
to  church,  learn  my  lessons,  obey  my  parents,  and  enjoy 
my  dinner."  His  religious  training  had  accomplished  no 
more  than  to  put  him  in  possession  of  the  Protestant 
tradition.  It  was  some  years  after,  when  he  was  twenty- 
six,  that  he  was  first  "put  to  any  serious  trial  of  prayer." 
He  had  been  ill,  and  was  now  going  home  from  Italy. 
"Between  the  Campo  Santo  and  Santa  Maria  Novella  I 
had  been  brought  into  some  knowledge  of  the  relations 
that  might  truly  exist  between  God  and  his  creatures; 
and  thinking  what  my  father  and  mother  would  feel  if 
I  did  not  get  home  to  them  through  those  poplar  avenues, 
I  fell  gradually  into  the  temper,  and  more  or  less  tacit 
offering  of  very  real  prayer,  which  lasted  patiently 
through  two  long  days  and  what  I  knew  of  the  nights 
on  the  road  home.  On  the  third  day,  as  I  was  about 
coming  in  sight  of  Paris,  what  people  who  are  in  the 
habit  of  praying  know  as  the  consciousness  of  answer 
came  to  me,  and  a  certainty  that  the  illness,  which  had 
all  this  while  increased,  if  anything,  would  be  taken 
away."  Two  days  after,  he  found  himself  "in  the  inn 


138  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

at  Beauvais,  entirely  well,  with  a  thrill  of  conscious 
happiness  altogether  new."  This  is  the  solitary  instance 
of  personal  religious  feeling  in  the  volume,  and  appar- 
ently from  Ruskin's  comment  upon  the  incident,  it  was 
one  never  repeated.  To  what  extent  his  religious  train- 
ing fortified  his  moral  fervor,  besides  enabling  him  to 
enter  into  the  medieval  feeling  in  sacred  art,  is  another 
matter;  but  the  tone  of  the  passages  cited  show  that  he 
holds  mentally  an  attitude  of  superiority  toward  common 
Christian  belief  and  devotions. 

A  second  main  characteristic  of  his  education  was  his 
separation  from  healthy  association  with  those  of  his  own 
age,  the  care  with  which  he  was  kept  from  youthful 
exercises,  and,  in  general,  the  making  a  home-boy  of 
him.  He  was  not  at  all  indulged;  most  playthings  were 
denied  him;  he  was  taught  to  be  proper,  his  faults  were 
followed  by  the  usual  penalties,  and  he  seems  to  have 
been  reduced  to  an  extremely  angelic  docility,  so  that 
he  sat  for  years  in  a  quiet  manner  in  his  own  niche  in 
the  drawing-room,  listening  every  evening  to  his  father 
reading  romance  and  poetry  to  his  mother,  and  no  more 
thinking  of  doing  anything  disagreeable  than  a  star  of 
falling  from  heaven.  But,  more  than  this,  the  parents 
had  plans  for  him  as  a  child  of  promise,  for  which  the 
sherry  trade  would  not  afford  sufficient  scope.  Their 
conviction  of  his  genius  was  formed  early  and  grew  with 
portentous  rapidity,  and  his  father's  ideal  for  his  future 
was  "that  I  should  enter  college  into  the  best  society; 
take  all  the  prizes  every  year,  and  a  double  first  to 
finish  with;  marry  Lady  Clara  Vere  de  Vere;  write 
poetry  as  good  as  Byron's,  only  pious;  preach  sermons 
as  good  as  Bossuet's,  only  Protestant;  be  made  at  forty 
Bishop  of  Winchester,  and  at  fifty  Primate  of  England." 


MR.   RUSKIN'S   EARLY   YEARS  139 

The  ideal  was  not  so  defined  as  this  until  he  was  ready 
for  Oxford,  but  the  vision  of  the  future  bishop  seems 
to  have  loomed  up  while  the  child  was  of  very  tender 
years,  and  it  was  reluctantly  let  go.  There  is  one  rem- 
iniscence of  the  disappointment  here,  on  occasion  of  a 
conversation  between  his  father  and  an  artist,  who  were 
lamenting  "what  an  amiable  clergyman  was  lost  in  me. 
'Yes,'  said  my  father,  with  tears  in  his  eyes  (true  and 
tender  tears  as  ever  father  shed),  'he  would  have  been 
a  bishop.' "  Between  the  idea  that  the  child  was  to  be 
a  great  man  and  the  foolish  isolation  of  him  from  natural 
playmates,  a  remarkable  conceit  was  developed,  which 
Ruskin  is  only  too  frank  in  acknowledging;  he  heaps 
terms  of  ridicule  upon  his  childish  self,  and  the  reader 
is  not  disposed  to  say  him  nay,  but  rather  to  find  it 
a  great  misfortune  of  his  life  that  his  vanity  was 
coddled  in  a  safe  seclusion  from  the  disillusions  of  a 
public  school.  But  it  is  curious,  side  by  side  with  these 
comic  anathemas  on  his  boyish  "High-Mightiness,"  to 
come  upon  the  mature  judgments  he  has  formed  of  him- 
self, and  does  not  hesitate  to  proclaim;  he  never  learned 
the  lesson  of  modesty,  nor  did  perception  of  his  childish 
faults  enlighten  him  in  respect  to  weaknesses  of  his  man- 
hood. He  quotes  Mazzini  as  having  said  of  him,  "in  con- 
versation authentically  reported  a  year  or  two  before 
his  death,  that  I  had  'the  most  analytic  mind  in  Europe'; 
an  opinion  in  which,"  he  adds,  "so  far  as  I  am  acquainted 
with  Europe,  I  am  myself  entirely  disposed  to  concur." 
Elsewhere  he  deplores  the  loss  in  him  of  "a  fine  land- 
scape or  figure-outline  engraver,"  but  this  loss  he  mourns 
less  than  "the  incalculable  one  to  geology;"  for,  he  says, 
if,  in  Wales,  his  father  and  mother  "had  given  me  but 
a  shaggy  scrap  of  a  Welsh  pony,  and  left  me  in  charge 


140  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

of  a  good  Welsh  guide  and  of  his  wife,  if  I  needed  any 
coddling,  they  would  have  made  a  man  of  me  then  and 
there,  and  afterwards  the  comfort  of  their  own  hearts, 
and  probably  the  first  geologist  of  my  time  in  Europe." 
It  was  lucky  that  they  did  not  try  to  make  him  an 
ichthyologist,  at  any  rate.  When  he  got  the  "Poissons 
Fossiles,"  he  saw  that  "Agassiz  was  a  mere  blockhead  to 
have  paid  for  all  that  good  drawing  of  the  nasty,  ugly 
things,  and  that  it  didn't  matter  a  stale  herring  to  any 
mortal  whether  they  had  any  names  or  not,  .  .  .  and 
that  the  book  ought  to  have  been  called  after  the  lithog- 
rapher, his  fishes,  only  with  their  scales  counted  and 
called  bad  names  by  subservient  Monsieur  Agassiz." 
This  is  a  mere  explosion  of  bad  temper,  but  it  helps  us 
to  guess  what  sort  of  "a  first  geologist  of  Europe"  he 
would  have  been,  and  to  reckon  how  he  would  have 
fared  pitted  against  Lyell.  It  may  be  doubted,  too, 
whether  he  would  have  kept  very  long  to  the  manage- 
ment of  that  wished-for  Welsh  pony:  the  parents  did 
try  to  have  him  taught  riding,  both  by  a  groom  and  at 
a  riding-school,  but  he  had  too  much  facility  in  slipping 
off,  and  was  evidently  entirely  disinclined  to  learn. 

The  isolation  of  his  childhood  no  doubt  threw  him 
back  upon  himself  and  induced  his  precocity.  Stevenson 
remarked  upon  one  virtue  of  the  Scotch  Sabbath,  in 
that  it  made  a  boy  who  could  not  employ  himself  in  his 
usual  play  think  out  of  mere  idleness,  and  the  time 
being  a  solemn  one  his  thoughts  were  touched  by  it. 
Mr.  Ruskin's  every-day  life  was  such  a  Scotch  Sabbath. 
It  was  empty  of  most  young  interests,  affections,  and 
amusements.  Listening  to  his  father's  readings  from 
Scott,  and  Cervantes,  and  Byron,  the  boy  naturally  took 
to  literature  in  imitative  verse  and  prose,  just  as  he  wrote 


MR.   RUSKIN'S   EARLY   YEARS  141 

abstracts  of  sermons  that  he  had  heard  preached;  and 
he  also  took  to  drawing  hi  a  similarly  obvious  way. 
Whatever  literary  or  artistic  talent  was  possible  in  him 
was  bound  to  come  out  under  such  circumstances,  and 
power  of  expression  would  grow  with  practice;  and  so 
those  first  signs  of  promise  put  forth  which  confirmed  his 
parents7  ambition  for  him  as  a  piously  Byronic  bishop. 
This  was  the  compensation  for  what  he  lost,  but  what 
he  lost  was  never  to  be  recovered,  for  all  that;  and  the 
worst  of  his  loss,  besides  practical  faculty  and  habits 
of  manliness,  was  the  exercise  of  his  affections.  He  has 
cared  throughout  his  life,  he  says  —  and  this  is  certainly 
true  of  his  earlier  career  —  for  inanimate  things,  moun- 
tains and  clouds  chiefly;  and  one  reason  of  this  is,  that 
he,  to  use  his  own  words,  "had  nothing  to  love"  in  his 
childhood  and  youth,  and  indeed  did  not  love  anything; 
for  his  affection  for  his  parents  was  not  of  the  intimate 
kind,  and  he  looked  on  them  as  a  part  of  the  benefi- 
cent universe,  like  the  sun  and  the  moon.  This  is  his 
own  account  of  the  matter;  and  he  regrets  the  circum- 
stance, curiously  enough,  not  because  of  such  results 
as  we  have  indicated,  but  because,  when  he  fell  in  love 
with  that  Adele  who  "couldn't  be  an  angel  because  she 
was  a  Roman  Catholic,"  he  did  not  know  how  to  manage 
himself.  His  confession  of  this  first  fit  of  amorousness 
is  one  of  the  oddest  things  in  the  volumes,  and  indeed 
all  his  references  to  the  various  maidens  who  attracted 
his  roving  fancy,  or  his  parents'  more  prudent  eyes,  are 
astonishing.  Adele  was  a  bright  Spanish  girl,  the  daugh- 
ter of  his  father's  partner  in  sherry,  and  knew  a  great 
deal  more  than  her  adorer,  who  fell  in  love  with  her  while 
she  was  visiting  the  Ruskins,  and  found  the  course  of  his 
malady  rapid  and  severe.  He  wooed  her  by  displaying 


I42  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

his  powers  in  Protestant  argument  and  romantic  narra- 
tive, and  by  his  bad  French;  but  she  was  only  amused,  and 
the  lover,  who  was  still  young  in  his  teens,  was  discon- 
solate in  the  old  fashion.  It  was  some  years  before  he 
recovered  from  the  disease;  and  reminiscences  of  the 
time  seem  to  be  disagreeable  enough,  for  he  rivals  his 
contempt  for  his  childish  conceit  by  his  ridicule  of  him- 
self as  a  lovesick  youth.  There  is  nothing  in  the  story, 
however,  that  excites  the  reader's  pity;  in  this,  as  well 
as  the  other  cases,  one  has  a  pleased  sense  of  listening 
to  much  youthful  confession  in  which  there  is  not  the 
least  seriousness.  The  feeling  was  real  enough,  but  it 
was  "fancy,"  as  we  say,  and  not  passion,  with  all  the 
unreality  of  sentimentalism  in  the  traditional  spring. 
Oxford  apparently  cured  him — -change  of  scene  and 
something  to  think  about. 

But  Ruskin  is  only  a  small  part  of  the  story;  and  one 
is  not  sorry  that  this  is  the  case,  for  he  was  not  an  in- 
teresting child,  and  his  boyhood  was  without  the  quali- 
ties that  make  boyhood  attractive.  The  scenes  in  which 
he  lived,  however,  and  the  people  with  whom  he  dwelt 
are  drawn  by  the  hand  of  the  grown  man,  and  have  more 
of  himself  in  them  than  has  the  manikin  he  then  was. 
The  banks  of  the  Tay  and  the  humble  relatives  at  Croy- 
don  help  his  narrative  very  much,  not  to  mention  the 
view  of  the  Alps  from  Schaffhausen,  where  he  thinks 
his  destiny  was  determined  for  him  at  fourteen,  or  the 
days  in  the  Campo  Santo,  or  the  revelation  of  the  in- 
fernal in  life  that  the  volcanic  Neapolitan  country  was  to 
him,  in  his  own  belief;  at  first  sight.  The  journeys  with 
his  parents  exhibit  their  character  very  pleasantly,  and 
they  were  excellent  persons;  their  devotion  to  their  son 
was  entire,  and  he  was  at  times  a  trying  young  man. 


MR.    RUSKIN'S   EARLY   YEARS  143 

The  first  acquaintance  with  Turner,  and  the  gradually 
increasing  interest  of  the  family,  not  only  in  his  work, 
but  in  artists  generally,  furnish  agreeable  passages;  the 
fortunes  of  the  servants  and  other  connections  of  the 
family,  and  the  sketches  of  the  acquaintance  of  the 
household  who  used  occasionally  to  visit  them,  are  in- 
teresting in  the  way  of  episode,  though  the  manner  is 
somewhat  Carlylean,  too  grim,  too  indifferent,  too  con- 
sciously superior.  Oxford  yields  one  good  chapter,  and, 
as  was  to  be  anticipated  in  the  case  of  a  youth  such  as 
we  have  intimated  Ruskin  was,  it  is  not  without  humor. 
He  entered  as  a  gentleman  commoner,  that  being  the 
safest  mode  of  entrance  for  one  with  his  weak  scholar- 
ship, and  one  attractive  to  him  and  his  parents  because 
he  would  wear  a  velvet  cap  and  silk  sleeves,  incredible 
as  it  seems  that  this  should  have  been,  as  he  says,  a 
"telling  consideration,"  even  to  the  largest  importer  of 
sherry  and  his  scriptual  wife  and  heir.  His  aristocratic 
mates  took  his  measure  and  received  him  very  well;  and 
his  mother  coming  down  to  live  in  the  city,  to  be  near 
in  case  he  should  be  ill,  he  spent  his  evenings  with  her, 
and  apparently  did  not  annoy  any  one  with  his  frequent 
presence  elsewhere.  He  was  fortunate  enough,  too,  to 
be  taken  up  by  Henry  Acland,  his  senior  by  a  year  and 
a  half,  whose  rooms  "became  to  me,"  he  says,  "the  only 
place  where  I  was  happy.  He  quietly  showed  me  the 
manner  of  life  of  English  youth  of  good  sense,  good 
family,  and  enlarged  education;  we  both  of  us  already 
lived  in  elements  far  external  to  the  college  quadrangle." 
And  he  later  completes  the  picture  of  Acland's  man- 
liness, in  whom  he  saw  "  a  noble  young  English  life  in 
its  purity,  sagacity,  honor,  reckless  daring,  and  happy 
piety,"  by  contrasting  him  with  himself  in  his  own  less 


144  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

hardy  fiber,  and  showing  at  the  same  time  the  point 
of  sympathy:  aln  all  this  playful  and  proud  heroism 
of  his  youth,  Henry  Acland  delighted  me  as  a  leopard  or 
a  falcon  would,  without  in  the  least  affecting  my  own 
character  by  his  example.  I  had  been  too  often  ad- 
jured and  commanded  to  take  care  of  myself  ever  to 
think  of  following  him  over  slippery  weirs,  or  accom- 
panying him  in  pilot-boats  through  white-topped  shoal 
water;  but  both  in  art  and  science  he  would  pull  me  on, 
being  years  ahead  of  me,  yet  glad  of  my  sympathy,  for, 
till  I  came,  he  was  literally  alone  in  the  university  in 
caring  for  either."  Such  glimpses  of  open,  honest  life 
on  entirely  natural  and  wise  terms  are  not  frequent  in 
these  pages,  but  some  there  are,  and  they  help  the  in- 
terest. There  is  a  considerable  proportion,  too,  of  Tur- 
nerian  rhetoric  about  the  Alps  and  Italy,  of  which  the 
novelty  has  passed  away  and  only  the  diffuseness  re- 
mains; and  there  is  something  of  interest  in  the  history 
of  Ruskin's  artistic  taste  through  Prout,  rejecting 
Raphael  by  the  way,  to  the  Campo  Santo  and  the  Santa 
Maria  Novella,  but  this  record  is  already  written  in 
his  earlier  books 


CARLYLE  AND  HIS  FRIENDS 


IN  Carlyle's  "Reminiscences"  are  etched  the  lineaments 
of  many  persons,  obscure  or  notable,  particularly  of  the 
author's  relatives,  and  of  Irving,  Jeffrey,  Southey, 
and  Wordsworth.  Occasionally,  as  comment  on  these 
sketches,  sparse  literary  criticism  is  furnished,  and  at 
intervals  a  random  flash  or  two  of  the  old  fire  flares  out; 
but  the  volume  has  most  interest  as  a  fragmentary  auto- 
biography, and  most  value  in  furthering  our  acquaint- 
ance with  Carlyle.  It  is  an  old  man  who  is  talking, 
depressed  with  calamity  (the  moaning  ay  de  mi!  too 
constant,  too  painful),  garrulous,  but  with  the  secure 
and  confiding  garrulity  of  long  fireside  converse.  The 
cumbersome  detail,  however,  is  not  useless,  especially 
that  concerning  his  diversely  branching  genealogy;  it  is 
no  new  thing  to  indicate  the  debt  of  his  genius  to  a 
Scotch  extraction,  but  this  avuncular  anecdotage  marks 
out  the  obligation  sharply,  and  registers  him  as  born  in 
the  savage  and  brawling  border-land,  lately  reclaimed 
to  civility  and  orderliness  —  his  father,  as  he  writes,  "of 
the  second  race  of  religious  men  in  Annandale."  But 
his  father  did  more  than  transmit  to  him  a  hardy  strain 
of  blood:  special  traits  in  the  taciturn,  fearless,  toiling, 
half-loved,  half-feared,  farmer-mason  —  his  gift  of  lively, 
picturesque  portraiture,  his  intensity  of  isolated  emotion, 
his  somber  veneration  —  are  recognizably  the  son's  in- 

145 


i46  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

heritance;  and  spiritual  fraternity  shines  unmistakably 
in  this,  which  was  one  of  his  last  sayings  to  his  still 
obscure,  though  man-grown  child:  "Man,  it's  surely  a 
pity  that  thou  shouldst  sit  yonder  with  nothing  but  the 
eye  of  Omniscience  to  see  thee,  and  thou  with  such  a 
gift  to  speak!"  A  noble  type  of  peasanthood,  worth 
recording  in  this  loving  sketch  of  him. 

The  ineffaceable  impression  left  by  these  records  as  a 
whole  is  of  the  habitual  solitude  in  which  Carlyle  dwelt, 
and  of  the  fierceness,  almost  ferocity,  of  the  struggle  that 
went  on  in  it.  Not  merely  in  youth  —  "life  tinted  with 
hues  of  imprisonment  and  impossibility,  hope  practically 
not  there,  only  obstinacy  and  a  grim  steadfastness  to 
strive  without  hope  as  with";  not  merely  in  the  appren- 
ticeship time  —  "nightly  working  at  the  thing  [Schiller] 
in  a  serious,  sad,  and  totally  solitary  way";  but  through- 
out active  life  at  least,  the  delirious  depression  of  spirit 
and  intensity  of  effort,  from  which  youthful  genius,  un- 
certain of  its  own  faculty  and  of  the  world's  opportunity, 
is  seldom  relieved,  haunted  him.  He  seized  upon  his 
work  with  a  tenacity  well-nigh  savage,  and  his  work  held 
him  like  a  spell  of  evil.  During  the  French  Revolution 
period,  for  example,  he  describes  himself  as  taking  his 
daily  afternoon  walk,  "always  heavy  laden,  grim  of 
mood,  sometimes  with  a  feeling  (not  rebellious  or  im- 
pious toward  God  Most  High),  but  otherwise  too  similar 
to  Satan's  stepping  the  burning  marl.  Once  or  twice, 
among  the  flood  of  equipages  at  Hyde  Park  corner,  I 
recollect  sternly  thinking,  'Yes;  and  perhaps  none  of  you 
could  do  what  I  am  at.'  But  generally  my  feeling  was, 
'I  shall  finish  this  book,  throw  it  at  your  feet,  buy  a 
rifle  and  spade,  and  withdraw  to  the  transatlantic  wilder- 
ness, far  from  human  beggaries  and  basenesses.' '  For 


CARLYLE   AND    HIS    FRIENDS  147 

three  years  "that  grim  book"  held  him  "in  a  fever  blaze"; 
at  the  end  he  stood  leaning  against  a  mile-stone,  with  his 
face  toward  Annan,  whither  he  had  gone  to  soothe  his 
"wild  excitation  of  nerves,"  his  purpose  to  write  the  book, 
though  he  should  die,  accomplished.  "Words  cannot 
utter  the  wild  and  ghastly  expressiveness  of  that  scene 
to  me;  it  seemed  as  if  Hades  itself  and  the  gloomy  realms 
of  death  and  eternity  were  looking  out  on  me  through 
those  poor  old  familiar  objects." 

The  thirteen  years  of  "Friedrich"  were  not  different 
"a  desperate  dead-lift  pull  all  that  time,  my  whole 
strength  devoted  to  it;  alone,  withdrawn  from  all  the 
world,  and  desperate  of  ever  getting  through  (not  to 
speak  of  'succeeding'  ;  left  solitary  'with  the  nightmares' 
(as  I  sometimes  expressed  it);  'hugging  unclean  crea- 
tures' (Prussian  blockheadism)  'to  my  bosom,  trying  to 
caress  and  flatter  their  secret  out  of  them!' 3  In  such  a 
fashion,  with  no  repose  in  the  idea,  no  ease  in  the  utter- 
ance, he  struggled  on  alone,  except  for  the  constant  at- 
tendance of  "the  desperate  hope,"  until  he  got  some  re- 
sponse to  his  questionings;  not  winning  it  by  any 
gracious  Prospero  serenity,  but  rather  extorting  the 
secret  by  putting  his  own  life  upon  the  rack. 

The  answer,  however,  was  sufficient  for  himself,  and 
has  proved  helpful  to  others.  The  ideal  of  conduct  and 
formula  of  excellence  he  reached  made  him  indifferent 
to  the  world's  verdict  upon  his  life  or  his  works.  If  the 
world  judged  not  by  his  standards,  its  judgments  were 
hollow.  At  first  he  had  not  been  so  wholly  careless;  but 
the  "conscript  fathers"  of  literature  were  silent.  From 
the  six  copies  of  "poor  Sartor"  sent  to  six  Edinburgh 
literary  friends  he  got  "no  smallest  whisper,  even  of 
receipt  —  a  thing  which,"  he  grimly  adds,  "  has  silently 


148  LITERARY    MEMOIRS 

and  insensibly  led  me  never  since  to  send  any  copy  of  a 
book  to  Edinburgh,  or,  indeed,  to  Scotland  at  all,  except 
in  unliterary  cases."  He  was  thus  forced  to  a  self- 
reliance  not  difficult  for  his  nature;  and  so,  when  Thacke- 
ray praised  him  in  the  "Times,"  "one  other  poor  judge 
voting/'  he  thought,  "but  what  is  he  or  such  as  he?" 
The  only  true  criticism  for  him,  respecting  that  French 
Revolution  specter-drama,  was  his  own  to  his  wife: 
"What  they  will  do  with  this  book  none  knows, 
my  Jeannie,  lass;  but  they  have  not  had  for  a  two 
hundred  years  any  book  that  came  more  truly  from 
a  man's  very  heart,  and  so  let  them  trample  it  under 
foot  and  hoof  as  they  see  best!"  His  final  feeling 
towards  his  works  and  their  value  to  the  world  is  shown 
by  this  remark  on  the  "Friedrich":  "It  has  now  become 
/coTT/305  to  me,  insignificant  as  the  dung  of  a  thousand 
centuries  ago.  I  did  get  through,  thank  God!  Let  it 
now  wander  into  the  belly  of  oblivion  forever!" 

The  world's  standards  were  not  for  him;  nevertheless, 
his  standards  were  for  all  the  world.  His  equanimity  in 
applying  them  would  resemble  that  of  the  careless  gods, 
were  his  humor  not  so  undeniably  atrabiliar,  in  conse- 
quence of  which  a  greater  number  of  fools,  bores,  and 
blockheads  are  here  set  down  by  name  than  would  have 
been  found  in  one  of  his  own  little  German  courts.  This 
pinning  of  flies  in  a  posthumous  work,  with  a  constant 
"See!  this  is  a  fly!"  —  why,  even  the  sentimental  "Get 
thee  gone,  poor  devil!"  is  better  stuff.  As  each  nonen- 
tity pops  into  the  field  of  vision  and  collapses,  there  comes 
into  the  mind  "Jeannie's"  old  grandfather,  and  how  he 
made  each  new  acquaintance  stand  up  to  be  measured, 
inches  being  infallibly  indicative  of  worth,  and  one  falls 
to  thinking  of  the  futility  of  all  standards  that  disregard 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS   FRIENDS  149 

specific  faculty  and  opportunity  even  in  the  humblest. 
Nor  is  the  mensuration  flawless  when  these  tests  are  ap- 
plied to  the  celebrities  whom  our  author  knew.  To  bor- 
row his  description  of  Wordsworth's  delineations,  these 
men  are  seen  "only  as  through  the  reversed  telescope, 
and  reduced  to  the  size  of  a  mouse  and  its  nest,  or  little 
more."  This,  of  De  Quincey,  is  one  of  the  best  of  such 
pictures:  "One  of  the  smallest  man  figures  I  ever  saw; 
shaped  like  a  pair  of  tongs,  and  hardly  above  five  feet 
in  all.  When  he  sate,  you  would  have  taken  him,  by 
candle-light,  for  the  beautifullest  little  child,  blue-eyed, 
sparkling  face,  had  there  not  been  a  something,  too, 
which  said,  'Eccovi  —  this  child  has  been  in  hell.' ' 
Etched  work,  as  has  been  observed  above;  the  acid  has 
bitten  in;  the  chief  result  is  an  effect.  Take  this  of 
Leigh  Hunt,  for  a  pleasanter  sort:  "Dark  complexion, 
copious,  clean,  strong,  black  hair,  beautifully  shaped 
head,  fine,  beaming,  serious  hazel  eyes;  seriousness  and 
intellect  the  main  expression  of  the  face.  He  would  lean 
on  his  elbow  against  the  mantel-piece  (fine,  clean,  elastic 
figure,  too,  he  had,  five  feet  ten  or  more),  and  look  round 
him  nearly  in  silence  before  taking  leave  for  the  night; 
'as  if  I  were  a  Lar,'  said  he  once,  'or  permanent  house- 
hold god  here'  (such  his  polite,  aerial-like  way)." 
Were  all  these  sketches  as  admirable,  there  could  be  only 
thankfulness  for  such  naturalness,  force,  veracity;  but 
when  his  mind  estimates  while  his  eye  sees,  when  he 
mixes  judgment  with  his  drawing  —  in  Coleridge,  Mill, 
Lamb  —  there  is  blur  and  error,  ending  often  lamely 
and  impotently  in  grotesque  results.  In  singular  con- 
trast with  this  inability  of  Carlyle  to  distribute  exact 
justice  to  men,  either  nobodies  or  notorieties,  is  his  appre- 
ciation of  those  nearest  to  him:  his  father,  whose  natural 


ISO  LITERARY  MEMOIRS 

endowment,  he  thinks,  possibly  greater  than  Robert 
Burns's,  and  his  wife,  who  exceeded,  it  seemed  to  him, 
"all  the  Sands  and  Eliots  and  babbling  coterie  of  cele- 
brated scribbling  women  that  have  strutted  over  the 
world  in  my  time,  if  all  boiled  down  and  distilled  to 
essence."  In  his  exceeding  solitariness  it  seemed  so; 
for  what  with  his  fever  and  battle,  the  sufficiency  to  him 
of  the  solution  he  gave  the  sphinx  riddle,  his  trust  in 
his  standards  of  work  done  and  thrusting  itself  on  the 
senses,  life  lost  to  his  eye  its  true  relief;  all  fine  and 
various  proportions  vanished  in  exaggerations  and  dimi- 
nutions. In  what  further  and  worse  obscurities  he  was 
involved  when  he  passed  from  the  individual  to  the 
mass  of  humanity,  in  "Latter-Day  Pamphlets"  and  the  like, 
these  records  show  little  sign,  except  for  an  outbreak 
about  the  "beautiful  nigger  agony"  and  a  quaver  over 
"poor  Davis." 

He  taught  us  much,  but  at  the  end  he  stood  in  a 
tragic  isolation  from  the  men  in  whom  the  fire  of  his 
thought  burned  most  clearly.  He  denounced  their  aims, 
he  put  their  hopes  from  him;  the  trend  of  the  new  civil- 
ization, with  its  democracies,  its  philanthropies,  its  pros- 
perities, was,  it  seemed  to  him,  downward  to  the  pit, 
and  he  sang  his  Tiresiad  to  the  last.  These  autobiographic 
fragments,  however,  do  something  to  disclose,  though 
darkly,  a  unity  that  explains  the  denouement  of  his 
career.  So  to  speak,  his  own  nature  imprisoned  him, 
his  own  effort  obstructed  him,  his  own  development 
dwarfed  him.  "A  haggard  existence,  that  of  his,"  said 
he  to  Southey  of  Shelley.  His  own  existence  was  grim 
and  gaunt,  a  wrestling  with  far  other  than  the  angel  of 
the  Lord;  with  dark  spirits,  indeed,  "as  of  a  man  [it  is 
his  own  account]  shrouded  since  youthhood  in  continual 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  151 

gloom  and  grimness,  set  too  nakedly  versus  the  devil  and 
all  men."  His  struggle  was  heroic,  and  fruitful  of  spirit- 
ual good  to  men;  however  defective  in  joy,  in  humanity, 
in  repose,  his  life  now  takes  its  place  among  the  noblest 
of  English  men  of  letters. 


II 

That  one  day  which  Emerson  made  "look  like  en- 
chantment," in  the  poor  house  of  the  lonely  hill-country 
where  Carlyle  was  biding  his  time,  may  well  be  reckoned 
memorable  and  fortunate  in  the  annals  of  literature.  It 
knit  together,  at  the  beginning  of  their  career,  the  two 
men  who  were  to  give,  each  in  his  own  land,  the  most 
significant  and  impressive  utterance  of  spiritual  truth 
in  their  age.  Mutual  respect  and  open  sympathy  arose 
in  their  hearts  at  first  sight,  and  soon  became  a  loyal 
and  trustful  affection,  which,  endeared  by  use  and  wont, 
proved  for  almost  fifty  years  one  of  the  best  earthly 
possessions  that  fell  to  their  lot.  Throughout  this 
period,  except  for  a  few  brief  weeks,  they  lived  separate, 
and  hence  their  correspondence  is  a  nearly  complete 
record  of  their  friendship  as  it  was  expressed  in  words 
and  acts.  On  our  side  of  the  ocean  was  Emerson,  at 
Concord:  freed  from  pressing  care  by  his  competency 
of  twenty  thousand  dollars;  serene  in  his  philosophy  of 
"acquiescence  and  optimism";  working  in  his  garden 
or  walking  by  Walden  Pond;  discovering  geniuses  among 
the  townspeople;  lecturing  in  the  neighborhood,  or  jot- 
ting down  essays  for  his  readers  —  "men  and  women 
of  some  religious  culture  and  aspirations,  young  or  else 
mystical."  On  the  other  side  was  Carlyle,  "the  poorest 


1 52  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

man  in  London";  hag-ridden  by  spirits  of  revolt  and 
despair;  wrestling  with  his  books  as  with  the  demon, 
"in  desperate  hope";  finding  the  face  of  nature  spec- 
tral, and  the  face  of  man  tragically  burlesque;  saying 
to  himself,  "Surely,  if  ever  man  had  a  finger-of-Provi- 
dence  shown  him,  thou  hast  it;  literature  will  neither 
yield  the  bread  nor  a  stomach  to  digest  bread  with;  quit 
it  in  God's  name  —  shouldst  thou  take  spade  and  mat- 
tock instead";  yet  heartening  himself  with  his  mother's 
words,  "They  cannot  take  God's  providence  from  thee." 
The  letters  of  these  two  friends,  so  sharply  contrasted  by 
circumstances  and  nature,  must  be,  one  thinks,  of  ex- 
traordinary interest,  and  possibly  some  wonder  may 
spring  up  at  finding  the  talk  in  them  about  every-day 
matters  —  family,  work,  business,  friends,  and  the  like; 
but  the  special  charm  of  the  correspondence  lies  in  this 
fact,  in  its  being  human  rather  than  literary,  in  its 
naturalness  of  speech,  man  to  man,  whether  the  theme, 
in  Emerson's  phrase,  "savor  of  eternity,"  or  concern 
the  proper  mode  of  cooking  Indian  meal. 

There  is  much  about  "a  New  England  book,"  as  Car- 
lyle,  putting  Old  England  to  the  blush,  called  it  —  "Sartor 
Resartus"  —  and  of  its  welcome  to  Cape  Cod  and  Boston 
Bay,  which  made  Eraser  "shriek."  We  are  proud  of 
that;  and  now  we  can  be  glad  to  know  of  the  money  that 
went  to  Carlyle  from  us  for  this  and  other  books,  when 
he  needed  money,  and  can  feel  a  sympathetic  indignation 
against  the  "gibbetless  thief,"  whose  piracies  troubled 
Emerson  in  his  good  work,  even  though  we  get  a  cheap 
satisfaction  in  knowing  that  a  "brother  corsair"  in  Eng- 
land did  the  like  when  Carlyle  tried  to  reciprocate  his 
friend's  good  offices.  There  is  much,  too,  about  Car- 
lyle's  coming  to  America  to  lecture:  details  of  probable 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  153 

costs  and  profits;  assurances  that,  advertised  as  "the 
personal  friend  of  Goethe/7  he  would,  merely  "for  the 
name's  sake,"  be  "certain  of  success  for  one  winter,  but 
not  afterwards";  congratulations  that  "Dr.  Channing 
reads  and  respects  you,  a  fact  of  importance";  probabil- 
ities of  "the  cordial  opposition"  of  the  university.  (Ah, 
poor  Harvard!  But  what  can  be  expected  from  a  son 
of  thine  who  writes,  "The  educated  class  are  of  course 
less  fair-minded  than  others"?)  Nothing  came  of  all 
this,  though  Carlyle  did  not  yield  his  wish  to  visit  us  until 
he  was  an  old  man.  Glimpses  of  humorous  sights  and 
things  are  given  from  the  first:  of  Dr.  Furness,  "feeding 
Miss  Martineau  with  the  'Sartor';"  of  "Alcott's  English 
Tail  of  bottomless  imbeciles"  in  London;  of  Brook  Farm 
days  —  "not  a  reading  man  but  has  a  draft  of  a  new 
Community  in  his  waistcoat  pocket";  of  Carlyle  him- 
self (a  sight,  one  would  think,  to  stir  Rabelaisian  laugh- 
ter) at  a  water-cure  —  "wet  wrappages,  solitary  sad 
steepages,  and  other  singular  procedures."  Now  and 
then,  too,  they  praise  each  other,  as  friends  should. 
Thus  Carlyle,  on  reading  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  oration, 
breaks  out,  "I  could  have  wept  to  read  that  speech;  the 
clear  high  melody  of  it  went  tingling  through  my  heart.  I 
said  to  my  wife,  There,  woman! '  "  But  they  praise  with 
reservations,  as  befitted  their  independence  and  differ- 
ences. Carlyle  is  shy  of  his  friend's  genius  as  of  a 
possible  will-o'-the-wisp  (beautiful,  but  leading  whither?), 
and  Emerson  looks  askance  at  the  Harlequinries  of  his 
"Teufelsdrockh."  They  confide  their  bereavements  to  each 
other,  simply,  manfully:  now  it  is  Emerson's  little  boy, 
"the  bud  of  God,"  who  is  gone;  and  so  on  it  is  Carlyle's 
tenderly  loved  mother,  and  at  last  the  wife.  They  send 
their  friends  to  each  other  —  Emerson,  of  course,  by  far 


154  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

the  larger  number  —  and  they  talk  them  over.  In  these 
criticisms  and  characterizations  is  the  principal  literary 
interest  of  the  collection.  Most  of  them  are  by  Carlyle, 
and  they  exhibit  the  same  power  as  similar  passages  of 
his  "Reminiscences,"  but  more  wisely  used. 

Here  is  Alcott,  whom  Emerson  had  sent  on  "with  his 
more  than  a  prophet's  egotism,  a  great  man  if  he  cannot 
write  well";  whom  Carlyle  found  "a  genial,  innocent, 
simple-hearted  man,  of  much  natural  intelligence  and 
goodness,  with  an  air  of  rusticity,  veracity,  and  dignity 
—  the  good  Alcott,  with  his  long,  lean  face  and  figure, 
with  his  gray-worn  temples  and  mild,  radiant  eyes,  all 
bent  on  saving  the  world  by  a  return  to  acorns  and  the 
golden  age;  ...  let  him  love  me  as  he  can,  and  live 
on  vegetables  in  peace,  and  I  living  partly  on  vegetables 
will  continue  to  love  him!"  Margaret  Fuller,  Emerson 
describes  as  "without  beauty  or  genius,"  —  "with  a  cer- 
tain wealth  and  generosity  of  nature."  Carlyle  had 
larger  language  for  her:  "Such  a  predetermination  to 
eat  this  big  Universe  as  her  oyster  or  her  egg,  and  to  be 
absolute  empress  of  all  height  and  glory  in  it  that  her 
heart  could  conceive,  I  have  not  before  seen  in  any 
human  soul.  Her  'mountain-we/  indeed!  — but  her 
courage,  too,  is  high  and  clear,  her  chivalrous  nobleness 
indeed  is  great,  her  veracity  in  its  deepest  sense  a  toute 
epreuve."  In  briefer  strokes,  Miss  Martineau,  "swathed 
like  a  mummy  into  Socinian  and  Political-Economy  form- 
ulas, and  yet  verily  alive  in  the  inside  of  that";  the 
"pretty  little  robin-red-breast  of  a  man,"  Lord  Hough- 
ton;  Dr.  Hedge  —  "a  face  like  a  rock;  a  voice  like  a 
howitzer";  Southey  —  "the  shovel-hat  is  grown  to  him"; 
Macready,  who  "puts  to  shame  our  Bishops  and  Arch- 
bishops." The  list  is  a  long  one,  and  it  is  pleasing  to 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  155 

notice  that  Carlyle  recognizes  and  appreciates  good  quali- 
ties in  those  of  whom  he  writes.  Two  more  of  these  por- 
traits cannot  be  spared.  Of  Webster  he  writes,  "As 
a  Logic-fencer,  Advocate,  or  Parliamentary  Hercules, 
one  would  incline  to  back  him  at  first  sight  against  all  the 
extant  world.  The  tanned  complexion,  that  amorphous, 
crag-like  face,  the  dull  black  eyes  under  their  precipice 
of  brows,  like  dull  anthracite  furnaces,  needing  only  to 
be  blown,  the  mastiff-mouth  accurately  closed  —  I  have 
not  traced  so  much  of  silent  Berserkir  rage  that  I  remem- 
ber of  in  any  other  man."  Finally,  of  Tennyson,  before 
he  was  taken  up  "in  the  top  of  the  wave,"  —  "Alfred  is 
one  of  the  few  British  or  Foreign  Figures  who  are  and 
remain  beautiful  to  me;  a  true  human  soul,  or  some 
authentic  approximation  thereto,  to  whom  your  own  soul 
can  say,  Brother!  ...  a  man  solitary  and  sad  as 
certain  men  are,  dwelling  in  an  element  of  gloom.  .  .  . 
One  of  the  finest-looking  men  in  the  world;  a  great  shock 
of  rough,  dusty-dark  hair;  bright-laughing  hazel  eyes; 
massive  aquiline  face,  most  massive  yet  most  delicate; 
of  swallow-brown  complexion,  almost  Indian-looking; 
clothes  cynically  loose,  free-and-easy;  smokes  infinite 
tobacco.  His  voice  is  musical  metallic  —  fit  for  loud 
laughter  and  piercing  wail,  and  all  that  may  lie  between; 
speech  and  speculation  free  and  plenteous.  I  do  not 
meet,  in  these  late  decades,  such  company 'over  a  pipe." 
Elsewhere,  with  the  Carlyle  touch,  "He  wants  a  task!" 

Year  by  year  these  letters  go,  and  "the  cleft  of  differ- 
ence" grows  wider  between  the  two:  Carlyle  glowing 
more  intense  with  the  heat  of  a  dark  realism;  Emerson 
becoming  more  ethereal  in  his  ideality.  Their  mutual 
recognition  is  as  generous  as  ever,  but  each  wishes  the 
other  different.  Carlyle  calls  for  "some  concretion  of 


1 56  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

these  beautiful  abstracta."  "I  love  your  'Dial/ "  he 
writes,  "and  yet  it  is  with  a  kind  of  shudder.  You  seem  to 
me  in  danger  of  dividing  yourselves  from  the  Fact  of  this 
present  Universe,  and  soaring  away  after  Ideas,  Beliefs, 
Revelations,  and  such  like  —  into  perilous  altitudes  be- 
yond the  curve  of  perpetual  frost.  .  .  .  I  do  believe, 
for  one  thing,  a  man  has  no  right  to  say  to  his  own 
generation,  turning  quite  away  from  it,  'Be  damned!' 
It  is  the  whole  Past  and  the  whole  Future,  this  same 
cotton-spinning,  dollar-hunting,  canting  and  shrieking, 
very  wretched  generation  of  ours.  Come  back  into  it, 
I  tell  you."  Again  and  again  he  repeats  his  warning, 
and  calls,  "Come  down  and  help  us."  Emerson,  on  his 
side,  speaks  his  own  discontent  with  "that  spendthrift 
style  of  yours,"  those  "sky-vaultings,"  and  the  like,  but 
easily  tolerates  his  friend's  peculiarities,  and  at  last  takes 
him  as  "a  highly  virtuous  gentleman  who  swears";  while 
to  the  summons  to  leave  the  mountain-tops,  and  "come 
down,"  he  replies,  "I  don't  know  what  you  mean."  The 
genius  of  each  dominated  him,  and  the  world  has  not  lost 
thereby.  In  the  style  of  the  one  there  was  the  aroma  of 
Babylon,  and  in  that  of  the  other  something  of  the  day- 
dawn,  as  they  said  in  their  genuine  compliments;  but 
the  two  men  could  coalesce  as  little  as  would  the  two 
metaphors.  They  advanced  in  age,  and  the  letters  grew 
more  infrequent:  the  fault  was  Emerson's.  It  is  pitiful 
to  read  Carlyle's  appeals  against  his  friend's  silence,  the 
silence  of  that  voice  which  was  to  him,  he  says  over 
and  over,  the  only  human  voice  he  ever  heard  in  response 
to  his  own  soul.  He  was  wandering  about  his  native 
country  with  that  "fatal  talent  of  converting  all  nature 
into  Preternaturalism,"  or  standing  in  Luther's  room  in 
the  Wartburg  —  "I  believe  I  actually  had  tears  in  my 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  157 

eyes  there,  and  kissed  the  old  oak  table";  or  he  was 
struggling  with  "Friedrich,"  and  ever  repeating,  "I  am 
lonely  —  I  am  lonely."  At  the  end  of  a  long,  impas- 
sioned protest  (and  the  passion  is  next  to  tears)  against 
the  misapprehension  of  the  phrase  of  "the  eighteen  mil- 
lion fools,"  he  first  makes  his  prayer,  "O  my  Friend,  have 
tolerance  for  me,  have  sympathy  with  me!"  Again, 
as  early  as  1852,  he  writes,  "My  manifold  sins  against 
you,  involuntary  all  of  them,  I  may  well  say,  are  often 
enough  present  to  my  sad  thoughts;  and  a  kind  of  re- 
morse is  mixed  with  the  other  sorrow  —  as  if  I  could  have 
helped  growing  to  be,  by  aid  of  time  and  destiny,  the 
grim  Ishmaelite  I  am,  and  so  shocking  your  serenity 
by  my  ferocities !  I  admit  you  were  like  an  angel  to  me, 
and  absorbed  in  the  beautifulest  manner  all  thunder- 
clouds into  the  depths  of  your  immeasurable  ether;  and 
it  is  indubitable  I  love  you  very  well,  and  have  long 
done,  and  mean  to  do.  And  on  the  whole  you  will  have 
to  rally  yourself  into  some  kind  of  correspondence  with 
me  again.  To  me,  at  any  rate,  it  is  a  great  want,  and 
adds  perceptibly  to  the  sternness  of  these  years;  deep  as 
is  my  dissent  from  your  Gymnosophist  view  of  Heaven 
and  Earth,  I  find  an  agreement  that  swallows  up  all  con- 
ceivable dissents."  But  the  letters  remained  long  un- 
answered upon  Emerson's  table,  in  spite  of  this  and  other 
like  appeals;  he  had  forgotten  his  early  words,  "Please 
God,  I  will  never  again  sit  six  weeks  of  this  short  human 
life  over  a  letter  of  yours  without  answering  it."  When 
he  does  write  he  assures  him  of  "the  old  love  with  the 
old  limitations,"  counts  it  his  "eminent  happiness  to  have 
been  your  friend"  and  discoverer,  and  may  well  say, 
"There  is  no  example  of  constancy  like  yours."  The 
fact  remains:  Emerson  appreciated  love  as  the  com- 


i58  LITERARY  MEMOIRS 

radeship  of  noble  minds;  but  of  the  love  that  clings  and 
yearns,  and  seeks  only  repose  in  the  friend,  he  knew 
not.  Every  syllable  he  ever  wrote  of  love  or  friendship 
is  thought,  not  passion.  Carlyle  had  the  peasant's  heart, 
the  heart  of  a  simple  man;  learning  had  not  dried  it, 
nor  flattery  hardened  it,  nor  the  charities  of  a  fortunate 
life  lulled  it.  He  knew  Emerson's  fidelity;  what  he 
wanted  was  not  the  knowledge,  but  the  sense  of  love. 
He  was  not  to  have  it  in  the  fullness  he  desired:  he 
grew  older  and  more  lonely,  and  the  letters  fewer,  until 
they  ceased,  ten  years  before  the  death  of  the  friends,  in 
the  business  necessary  for  the  conveyance  of  Carlyle's 
bequest  of  books  to  Harvard  College,  in  which  he  took 
great  pleasure,  as  in  "something  itself  connected  with 
THE  SPRING  in  a  higher  sense  —  a  little  white  and  red 
lipped  bit  of  Daisy,  pure  and  poor,  scattered  into 
TIME'S  Seed-field."  Here  it  seems  fit  to  notice,  once 
for  all,  the  deep  interest  and  friendliness  of  Carlyle 
toward  America,  as  it  is  shown  throughout  these  letters. 
To  quote  but  one  or  two  phrases,  America  is  at  the  be- 
ginning "the  other  parish"  —  "the  Door  of  Hope  to  dis- 
tracted Europe."  Of  the  subduing  of  the  Western 
prairies  he  exclaims,  "There  is  no  myth  of  Athene  or 
Herakles  equal  to  that  fact."  Finally,  at  the  close  of  all, 
he  confesses,  "I  privately  whisper  to  myself,  'Could  any 
Friedrich  Wilhelm,  now,  or  Friedrich,  or  most  perfect 
Governor  you  could  hope  to  realize,  guide  forward  what 
is  America's  essential  task  at  present  faster  or  more  com- 
pletely than  "anarchic  America"  herself  is  now  doing?' 
Such  "Anarchy"  has  a  great  deal  to  say  for  itself  (would 
to  Heaven  ours  of  England  had  as  much!),  and  points 
toward  grand  anti- Anarchies  in  the  future;  ...  I 
hope,  with  the  aid  of  centuries,  immense  things  from 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  159 

it,  in  my  private  mind."  Burke's  famous  admission,  in 
his  "Reflections  on  the  French  Revolution,"  that  he  might 
be  wrong,  after  all,  was  not  more  creditable  to  his  large 
wisdom  than  is  this  to  Carlyle's  deep  sincerity. 

The  reputation  of  Carlyle  has  materially  gained  by 
this  "Correspondence,"  while  Emerson  remains  the  man 
we  have  always  known.  As  in  the  "Reminiscences,"  we 
see  again  the  grimness,  the  frightful  intensity,  the  solitude, 
of  Carlyle's  life.  It  is  marvelous  to  notice  how  exactly 
Carlyle's  account  of  his  states  of  feeling,  written  from 
memory,  agrees  with  the  contemporary  record  of  the 
letters.  But  beyond  what  was  told  us  before,  we  possess 
now  clearer  proofs  of  his  sympathy  and  tenderness;  his 
heart  is  laid  bare,  and  we,  being  freed  from  the  preju- 
dices stirred  by  the  praise  or  blame  that  came  from  it  in 
particular  cases,  can  better  appreciate  his  humanity. 
His  genius  was  of  that  kind  which  makes  misapprehension 
and  hatred  easy;  this  volume  helps  to  show  us  the  man 
as  he  truly  was,  one  of  the  noblest  of  men. 


Ill 

The  Goethe-Carlyle  Correspondence  has  the  character 
of  a  literary  episode.  It  presents  several  aspects,  all 
of  them  simple.  The  sight  of  Carlyle  himself  in  an  atti- 
tude of  ordinary  human  respect  toward  a  mortal  creature 
still  in  the  flesh  is  in  itself  a  pleasing  spectacle;  and  he 
is  here  to  be  observed  in  the  postures  of  practical  hero- 
worship.  To  Goethe,  the  writer,  Carlyle  believed  him- 
self to  be  under  great  obligation  for  light  upon  the  uni- 
versal mystery,  and  for  counsel  in  the  conduct  of  life; 
and  to  Goethe,  the  man,  he  accordingly  expressed  his 


160  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

fervent  gratitude,  as  bright  youths  in  similar  circum- 
stances are  so  often  tempted  of  the  devil  to  do,  by 
inditing  a  letter  to  the  ruling  genius  of  the  hour  under 
whose  intellectual  sway  he  happened  to  be  born.  In 
this  case  the  usual  unfortunate  disillusion  did  not  fol- 
low: the  "spiritual  father"  showed  himself  truly  paternal, 
smiled  benignity  upon  the  plans,  fortunes,  and  various 
activities  of  the  young  man;  and  the  "grateful  son,"  in 
his  turn,  sent  his  tribute  of  translations,  eulogistic  crit- 
iques, and  epistolary  compliments  to  the  sage  at  Weimar. 
The  influence  of  Goethe  certainly  was  the  most  powerful 
external  stimulus  in  the  literary  life  of  Carlyle,  and  the 
friendly  recognition  which  the  latter  received  from  the 
great  man,  while  still  obscure  and  unsuccessful,  was  no 
doubt  a  comfort,  and  perhaps  a  support;  the  gratitude 
of  Carlyle  was  sincere,  and  his  service  to  the  fame  of 
his  master  was  considerable.  But  the  relationship  es- 
tablished by  the  Correspondence  was  personal,  not  intel- 
lectual; if  one  opens  this  volume  with  any  expectation 
of  finding  wisdom  in  it,  he  will  come  to  grief;  that  side 
of  the  connection  must  be  sought  in  the  works  of  the 
two  authors.  In  these  letters,  they  express  their  in- 
dividuality, not  their  genius;  they  are,  on  page  after 
page,  men  leading  an  every-day  life. 

To  the  fashion  of  our  times  there  seems  to  be  some- 
thing peculiar  in  the  general  tone  of  these  letters,  which 
is  not  altogether  explained  by  reminding  ourselves  that 
of  the  two  persons  engaged  one  was  old,  the  other  young; 
one  the  oracular  voice,  the  other  an  acolyte;  one  the 
shining  great  original,  the  other  a  Scotch  translator. 
These  differences  do  not  account  for  what  appears  to  be 
a  lack  of  naturalness,  or  at  least  of  that  openness  which 
is  the  charm  of  familiar  literary  correspondence.  This 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  161 

Correspondence  is  very  literary,  but  more  formal  than 
familiar:  the  principal  figure  in  it  is  the  monarch  of 
literary  Europe,  who  is  also  a  court  chamberlain;  and 
both  the  participants  are  aware  of  the  value  of  ceremony 
in  adjusting  human  relations.  The  consequence  is,  to 
be  frank,  that  Goethe  is  undeniably  heavy  in  his  com- 
munications, and  Carlyle  is  preternaturally  solemn,  even 
for  a  young  Scotchman  of  his  severe  ilk.  Goethe's 
heaviness  is  unquestionably  natural ;  but,  quite  as  plainly, 
Carlyle  is  minding  his  manners.  One  rubs  his  eyes,  and 
asks  if  this  is  the  Carlyle  we  know.  How  much  he  was 
warped  from  his  native  bent  it  is  easy  to  observe  by  the 
contrast  of  the  few  contemporary  letters  to  personal 
friends  which  interleave  the  main  Correspondence.  In 
them  he  speaks  out  like  a  man;  but  in  reading  the  others, 
and  especially  the  earlier  of  them,  one  is  reminded  of 
nothing  so  often  as  of  the  dedicatory  epistles  to  that  by- 
gone worthy,  over  whose  disestablishment  by  Johnson 
Carlyle  rejoiced  —  the  Patron.  As  to  the  documentary 
missives  that  came  from  Weimar,  Carlyle  himself  kept 
up  a  silent  thinking.  What  does  he  say  confidentially 
to  brother  John,  now  on  his  travels,  and  possibly  to  be 
in  the  actual  presence  of  the  great  man? 

"To  a  certainty  you  must  come  round  by  Weimar,  as 
you  return,  and  see  this  world's  wonder,  and  tell  us  on 
your  sincerity  what  manner  of  man  he  is,  for  daily  he 
grows  more  inexplicable  to  me.  One  letter  is  written 
like  an  oracle,  the  next  shall  be  too  redolent  of  twaddle. 
How  is  it  that  the  author  of  "Faust"  and  "Meister"  can 

tryste  himself  with  such  characters  as  'Herr '  (the 

simplest  and  stupidest  man  of  his  day,  a  Westmoreland 
Gerundgrinder   and   cleishbotham)    and   'Captain  — 
(a  little  wizened,  cleanly  man,  most  musical,  most  melan- 


1 62  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

choly)?  .  .  .  For  myself,  unshaken  in  my  former 
belief,  though  Jane  rather  wavers,"  etc. 

"Twaddle"!  But  whether  it  was  the  curious  testi- 
monial of  Carlyle's  fitness  to  be  a  Scotch  professor,  which 
he  had  just  received,  and  which  is  the  most  Shandean 
document  of  the  kind  within  our  knowledge,  or  whether 
it  was  the  gracious  welcome  given  to  the  Herr  and  Cap- 
tain blanked  in  such  unmistakable  Carlylese,  that  drew 
forth  this  improper  expression,  does  not  appear.  One 
concludes  that  it  was  as  well  that  athe  pair,"  as  the 
Carlyles,  man  and  wife,  are  usually  designated  in  these 
pages,  did  not  make  their  wished-for  journey  to  Weimar. 
It  was  much  better  to  exchange  books  and  trinkets,  and 
live  at  the  ends  of  the  earth. 

Yet  what  has  been  said  above  is  only  a  part  of  the 
story,  and  the  least  agreeable  part.  From  another  point 
of  view,  this  memorial  of  the  acquaintance  of  these  two 
illustrious  men  is  more  attractive.  It  is  without  intel- 
lectual value,  not  unnaturally;  these  two  men  have  ex- 
pressed themselves  so  fully  in  their  books  that  nothing 
fresh  or  striking  in  the  way  of  thought  could  be  antic- 
ipated; but  as  an  exhibition  of  kindness  and  good-will 
on  Goethe's  part,  and  of  reverence  and  disciple-ship  on 
Carlyle's,  the  Correspondence  has  a  human  interest,  and 
it  serves  also  as  a  landmark  in  English  literary  history. 
To  Goethe,  Carlyle  was  only  a  translator  and  student  of 
German  literature,  engaged  in  the  active  propagandism 
of  the  fame  and  name  of  himself  and  his  compatriots. 
He  praised  him,  indeed,  in  general  terms,  and  predicted 
a  future  for  him;  but  there  is  no  intimation  that  he  saw 
any  original  genius  in  him  except  what  could  be  usefully 
employed  in  continuing  the  business  of  translating  his 
own  works  and  writing  manuals  of  German  literature; 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS   FRIENDS  163 

and  the  tone  and  matter  of  Eckermann's  letters  indicate 
that  this  was  in  fact  all  that  the  name  of  Carlyle  meant 
at  Weimar. 

At  that  time  Carlyle  had  given  no  sign  of  being  capable 
of  work  other  than  critical  review,  of  a  longer  or  shorter 
kind.  He  was  then  the  principal  channel  by  which  Ger- 
man literature  was  being  communicated  to  the  English 
people,  and  it  was  this  circumstance,  practically,  that 
made  Goethe  his  correspondent.  The  latter's  heart  was 
in  the  work  of  extending  German  ideas  into  other  lan- 
guages, and  promoting  a  general  intellectual  commerce 
among  civilized  nations,  and  he  found  in  Carlyle  a  ready 
and  able  assistant;  and  inasmuch  as  all  that  was  being 
done  in  England  then  in  disseminating  German  thought 
was  a  matter  of  interest  to  Goethe,  it  happens  that 
this  Correspondence  represents  fairly  well  the  historic 
moment  when  the  later  literary  influence  of  Germany 
began  to  be  effective  on  English  soil.  This  interest  of 
the  letters  is  merely  incidental  and  for  scholars;  but  it 
helps  us  to  understand  the  facts  of  Carlyle's  relation 
to  Goethe,  which  really  sprang  out  of  his  usefulness  as  a 
hack-writer  on  the  magazines  and  as  a  translator.  We 
do  not  have  here  the  communion  of  two  equal  friends, 
as  in  the  letters  between  Carlyle  and  Emerson,  or  of  two 
original  minds  actively  giving  or  receiving  influence; 
there  is  nothing  of  this,  but  only  compliments,  attentions, 
and  talk  incidental  to  the  German  propaganda. 

This  being  understood,  it  is  altogether  delightful  to 
observe  in  what  kindly  and  intimate  ways  Goethe 
varied  and  enriched  the  slight  connection  between  him- 
self and  his  practically  unknown  admirer,  how  thought- 
ful he  was,  what  true  and  natural  good-feeling  he  showed, 
until  the  acquaintance  did  really  ripen  into  a  warm 


1 64  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

mutual  friendliness.  This  is  the  charming  thing  m  view 
of  which  one  forgets  that  Goethe  was  anything  more 
than  a  pleasant  and  polite  old  gentleman,  much  engaged 
in  the  little  affairs  of  age,  and  sorry  that  his  head  could 
no  longer  furnish  a  lock  of  hair  for  that  one  of  "the 
worthy  wedded  pair"  who  had  sent  him  a  lock  from  her 
own;  and  forgets,  too,  that  Carlyle,  although  still  un- 
distinguished, was  by  no  means  a  youth  when  he  was 
writing  the  most  decorous  compositions  he  ever  penned. 
One  enters  into  the  spirit  of  it,  and  enjoys  the  self- 
complacent,  kind-mannered  old  poet  and  the  meek  and 
not  altogether  unsuspecting  Scotchman;  for  in  no  other 
place  does  Carlyle  appear  so  unmitigably  Scotch  as 
in  this  book. 


IV 

Of  the  good  and  evil  of  modern  biography  the  memorials 
of  Carlyle  will  be  a  severe  test.  Slowly  he  won  his  way 
merely  by  literature  to  a  place  where  he  had  the  respect 
of  the  world,  the  veneration  of  the  most  earnest  of  the 
younger  generation,  and  power  over  all  the  best.  He 
died;  and  the  interest  of  his  work,  which  had  been  as 
real  as  Alexander's,  as  laborious  as  Frederick's,  as  believ- 
ing as  Cromwell's,  has  been  superseded  by  the  interest 
of  his  life.  This  is  temporary,  of  course,  but  the  inti- 
mate knowledge  that  men  possess  in  regard  to  his  own 
human  nature  will  profoundly  modify  the  meaning  of 
his  books  to  them  and  in  the  long  run  this  change  for 
better  or  worse  will  prove  the  significant  thing.  He  him- 
self taught  that  character  is  the  best  light  by  which  to 
get  an  understanding  of  a  man's  work,  and  his  biographer 
has  proved  faithful  to  that  theory.  He  himself  author- 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS   FRIENDS  165 

ized  the  violation  of  his  own  thoughts,  affections,  and 
wrongdoing,  in  their  secretest  privacy.  It  is  true  that 
he  did  it  in  that  mood  of  sorrow  and  repentance  which 
is  peculiarly  liable  to  error  of  judgment,  when  a  wise 
friend  is  a  friend  indeed;  but  he  did  it.  The  seal  that 
protected  his  married  life  being  once  broken,  other  seals 
easily  gave  way.  There  can  be  no  question  that  Car- 
lyle's  literary  influence  has  seriously  suffered  in  conse- 
quence; and,  though  our  annals  have  been  enriched  by 
the  story  of  a  life  of  the  highest  moral  interest,  it  is 
quite  possible  that  the  sacrifice  has  been  too  great. 
There  have  been  men  whose  nature  so  outvalued  their 
work  that  biography,  while  revealing  their  feeblenesses, 
has  honored  them;  there  has  been  character  so  fine  that 
its  illustration  in  the  acts  of  daily  life  is  a  possession 
much  more  precious  than  any  other  record  of  it  orig- 
inally meant  for  the  public:  but  Carlyle's  nature  and 
character,  taken  in  the  whole,  were  not  such.  His  vir- 
tues were  completely  expressed  in  his  works,  and  for 
the  most  part  his  biography  has  been  a  lengthening  his- 
tory of  the  miserable  effects  of  his  faults  upon  his  own 
and  others'  lives.  Could  he  have  characterized  himself 
with  the  same  narrowness  of  heart  and  intellectual  con- 
tempt that  he  exhibited  toward  some  men  whom  he  knew, 
these  memorials  would  have  furnished  him  matter  for  a 
more  biting  and  a  more  unjust  description  than  any  he 
has  been  guilty  of.  What  the  features  of  it  would  be  there 
is  no  need  to  outline.  That  he  was  genuine,  sincere, 
truthful,  no  one  will  doubt;  but  all  will  remember  that  the 
same  qualities  in  that  "poor  fool"  of  a  Gladstone,  in  whom 
Carlyle  thought  all  the  cants  of  the  age  had  become 
convictions,  are  as  worthy  respect.  He  was  strenuously 
righteous;  but  so  was  Mill,  in  whom  that  virtue  did  not 


1 66  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

count  for  salvation  in  his  eyes.  So  one  might  con- 
tinue, were  it  useful  to  argue  to  the  point  that  Carlyle 
did  not  monopolize  the  manliness  of  England.  It  is  not 
strange  that  Froude  lays  stress  unduly  on  his  friend's 
good  traits,  but  it  cannot  be  disguised  that  there  is 
much  need  for  the  exercise  of  charity  by  the  reader;  and 
the  proof  of  this  is  that  the  story  touches  the  heart  far 
more  than  it  illumines,  or  exalts,  or  strengthens  the  spirit. 
In  this  narrative  of  the  years  of  Carlyle's  mature  life  in 
London,  one  point  is  touched  on  that  has  never  been  com- 
prehensively treated,  and  that  is  his  relation  to  the  public 
questions  of  his  own  time.  Froude  tries  to  make  much 
of  it,  but  he  succeeds  only  in  keeping  up  an  obscure  feeling 
that  the  subject  is  there.  Every  one  knows  what  Carlyle 
thought,  and  there  is  a  taking  plausibility  in  the  analogy 
Froude  finds  between  him  and  the  Hebrew  prophets  who 
rebuked,  denounced,  and  exhorted  the  tribes  that  forgot 
God;  but  the  likeness  would  hold  as  well  in  the  case  of  any 
vehement  reformer  who  had  not  the  power  of  the  sword. 
He  prophesied  destruction;  and  as  the  history  of  civilized 
man  has  been  a  series  of  catastrophes  it  is  quite  possible 
that  his  prophecy  is  true.  At  each  new  break  in  the  old 
order  men  hope  that  the  kingdom  of  God  is  near  at  hand, 
and  we  who  are  building  on  liberty,  the  diffusion  of  intelli- 
gence among  all  the  people,  and  philanthropy,  indulge  the 
old  belief,  perhaps  to  no  better  purpose  than  did  the  men 
who  converted  the  nations,  who  brought  back  antiquity, 
and  who  freed  the  conscience  of  Europe.  We  are  engaged 
in  a  great  effort  of  equal  dignity,  and  Carlyle  declared 
against  us,  set  himself  in  opposition  to  the  irresistible 
movement  of  civilization,  and  denounced  upon  us  "God's 
Revenge."  So  once  had  Savonarola  done  with  equal  sin- 
cerity, and  perhaps  the  issue  will  in  the  end  be  the  same 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  167 

to  the  moderns  as  it  was  to  the  Florentines.  But  in  this 
matter  Carlyle  exceeded  the  role  of  the  prophet;  he  not 
only  preached  that  no  moral  regeneration  could  come 
from  the  new  expedients  of  politics,  in  a  large  sense,  for 
the  administration  of  society,  but  he  added  that  such 
measures  were  foolish  in  their  own  worldly  sphere.  In 
the  first  part  of  his  message  he  was  right  —  he  said 
what  every  prophet  declares  is  God's  word;  but  in  the 
second  it  ought  now  to  be  the  devout  hope  of  all  men 
that  he  may  prove  a  babbler.  Certainly,  in  this  province 
of  his  thought  —  in  his  sneers  at  the  humane  efforts  of 
his  contemporaries  to  give  manhood  to  all  who  wear  the 
form  of  man,  to  show  even  in  prisons  some  kindliness  on 
the  part  of  organized  society  toward  the  criminal  and 
vicious,  to  insist  in  practical  affairs  that  no  man  can  be 
saved  except  by  the  exercise  of  powers  that  involve  such 
freedom  of  thought,  motive,  and  action  as  may  also  pos- 
sibly result  in  his  own  damnation  —  in  all  this  he  ran 
counter  to  the  spirit  of  Christianity.  His  temper  did 
belong  in  many  respects  to  the  Old  Dispensation,  to  the 
rigor  and  bigotry  of  Scotch  Presbyterianism,  to  the 
countryman  of  Knox.  He  was  so  careful  that  things 
should  be  done  decently,  that  acts  should  be  right,  as  to 
make  it  seem  that  his  corner-stone  was  a  belief  in  govern- 
ment. He  had  a  higher  regard  for  authority  than  liberty, 
for  compulsion  than  persuasion,  for  the  law  than  the 
victim;  but  of  the  aims  and  methods,  the  aspirations  and 
energies,  of  the  Christ's  kingdom  that  cometh  not  by 
force  he  seems  to  have  known  little.  He  never  was  so 
profound  a  spiritualist  as  to  make  statecraft,  as  Plato 
did,  a  department  of  man's  education:  to  him  all  that 
was  "niggerism."  Carlyle's  convictions  regarding  suf- 
frage, emancipation,  prison-reform,  parliamentary  gov- 


1 68  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

ernment,  and  the  like  topics  on  which  he  was  accustomed 
to  emit  "geyser-spouts,"  as  they  are  termed,  were  closely 
connected  with  his  more  general  views  of  the  moral 
order  of  the  universe,  the  sources  of  greatness  in  men  and 
nations,  and  the  lessons  of  history  as  he  read  them; 
and  to  follow  out  these  threads  of  union  would  be  very 
helpful  toward  an  explanation  of  his  reactionary  thought. 
Froude  has  not  done  this;  he  plainly  respects  Carlyle  as 
a  political  seer  as  well  as  in  his  capacity  of  "Hebrew 
prophet,"  but  he  brings  nothing  to  support  his  master 
except  a  Toryish  sentiment.  We  may  fail  in  our  effort 
for  the  self-education  of  the  race  by  devolving  upon 
men  opportunities  they  may  abuse  and  responsibilities 
they  may  violate,  and  there  are  elements  enough  of 
danger  in  our  legacy  from  old  times  as  well  as  of  our  own 
making;  but  had  Carlyle  been  our  leader  in  the  "Ex- 
odus from  Houndsditch,"  he  would  have  taken  us  back, 
very  surely,  to  the  bondage  of  an  Israelitish  code,  if  not 
to  the  shadow  of  Egypt  itself. 

In  the  last  forty  years  of  Carlyle's  London  career  there 
is  fresh  illustration  of  his  character,  but  no  new  traits 
appear.  The  impression  which  is  most  strengthened  is 
that  of  the  strange  mingling  of  the  rudeness  of  his  orig- 
inal nature  with  the  fineness  of  the  high-bred  civilization 
into  which  he  grew.  The  strength  of  his  peasant  an- 
cestry was  at  the  core  of  his  virtue;  but  as  he  developed, 
and  appropriated  from  others,  many  modifications  are 
noticeable:  for  one  thing,  he  became  tender.  One  be- 
lieves he  was  always  essentially  kind;  but,  as  in  unculti- 
vated men,  his  kindness  had  to  be  appealed  to  in  order 
to  become  active;  it  was  not  the  habit  of  his  daily  life. 
It  is  as  if  the  softening  and  enriching  processes,  that 
usually  require  the  period  of  two  or  three  generations 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  169 

to  import  into  character  the  fine  results  of  civilization, 
had  been  crowded  into  a  single  existence.  This  is  one 
reason,  perhaps,  why  the  last  years  of  his  life  seem 
morally  more  beautiful,  as  if  time  had  done  its  perfect 
work  for  him.  The  trait  which  shows  most  plainly  his 
peasant  extraction  and  which  clung  longest  to  him  was 
his  peculiar  appreciation  of  the  charm  of  civility  as  he 
saw  it  in  great  houses.  It  is  the  more  significant  be- 
cause he  seldom  gives  it  verbal  form;  he  may  not  have 
known  quite  clearly  his  own  feeling.  It  may  seem  a 
strange,  an  inconsistent  matter;  but  there  can  be  no 
rational  doubt  that  Carlyle  liked  to  be  lionized,  and  was 
willing  to  pay  the  price  of  physical  misery  for  a  dinner 
with  great  people.  It  was  not  the  worst  of  faults.  He 
would,  nevertheless,  probably  have  resented  Froude's 
description  of  him  as  one  of  Lord  Ashburton's  train; 
and  so  far  as  his  consciousness  went  the  remark  must  be 
regarded  as  unjust,  though  the  fact  may  have  been  as 
stated.  However  that  was,  he  paid  dearly  for  the  epi- 
sode of  his  friendship  with  that  excellent  nobleman.  In 
other  matters,  too,  especially  in  the  ferocity  of  his 
judgments,  one  hears  the  North  Briton  accent.  But 
after  all,  the  story  of  this  life  now  finished  is  a  very 
noble  one;  it  attaches  men's  hearts  to  a  degree  that  is 
marvelous  when  one  remembers  how  much  there  is  in 
it  which  repels.  Carlyle's  life,  for  better  or  worse,  is 
now  a  part  of  his  works. 


Unconscious  autobiography  is  interesting,  but  it  is 
seldom  fair  and  adequate.  In  "The  Letters  and  Mem- 
orials of  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle,"  one  reads  plainly  the  petty 


1 70  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

and  mean  details  of  a  thirty  years'  housekeeping;  but 
it  is  only  inferentially  that  one  gains  an  impression  of 
the  charm  that,  before  Mrs.  Carlyle's  marriage,  sur- 
rounded her  with  lovers,  and,  after  it,  made  her  the 
prized  friend  of  men  of  intellect,  and  the  refuge  of  all 
mad  and  miserable  people,  and  won  for  her,  when  she 
grew  old,  the  enthusiastic  affection  of  her  associates  of 
all  ages  and  all  degrees  of  talent  or  stupidity.  She  has 
fared  ill  in  having  her  familiar  letters  given  to  the  world 
just  as  they  were  written,  in  the  raw,  with  all  their 
feminine  confidences,  which  an  editor  with  a  touch  of 
the  old-fashioned  chivalrous  feeling  for  women  would 
have  suppressed,  with  their  hasty  account  of  her  domes- 
tic vexations  of  body  and  mind,  their  revelation  of  her 
little  necessary  social  hypocrisies,  and  even  the  heart- 
burnings that  she  intrusted  only  to  her  diary.  Her 
husband,  it  is  true,  prepared  the  letters  for  publication; 
he  was  led  to  do  so  by  a  wish  to  honor  her,  and  also  by 
a  feeling  of  remorse  and  a  desire  to  do  penance  for  his 
ill-treatment;  but  he  left  the  decision  in  the  matter  to 
Froude,  on  whom  the  responsibility  lies.  It  is  useless 
to  lament  the  indiscretion  and  obtuseness  of  this  editor; 
the  hero  has  found  his  valet,  and  the  preacher  of  silence 
is  to  have  as  many  words  made  about  him  and  his  as 
possible;  it  is  only  left  to  the  public  to  be  thankful 
that  the  house,  which  is  now  lighted  up  and  thrown 
open  from  kitchen  to  bedroom,  had  no  worse  secrets  for 
disclosure. 

The  letters,  being  written  by  an  unsuspecting  woman 
who  was  unusually  genuine,  frank,  original,  audacious  in 
word  and  act,  and  unconventional  to  a  fault,  and  being, 
moreover,  seasoned  with  entertaining  literary  and  social 
gossip,  are,  of  course,  full  of  interest.  Vivacity  is  the 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS   FRIENDS  171 

marked  trait  of  the  writer;  but  the  continual  reference 
to  her  happy  girlhood  and  its  scenes,  growing  more 
pathetic  year  after  year,  and  the  continual  lament  of 
Carlyle  in  his  notes  —  like  a  Greek  chorus,  giving  a 
kind  of  artistic  unity  to  the  series  —  lend  an  effect  of  sad- 
ness to  the  whole.  The  life  of  the  heroine  —  she  de- 
serves the  name  —  was  impressive;  amid  the  ignoble 
trivialities  that  fell  to  her  daily  lot,  she  kept  to  the  high 
purposes  involved  in  them  with  great  courage  and  self- 
control,  and  with  unremitting  devotion.  An  only  child, 
reared  in  a  wealthy  and  refined  home,  the  favorite  of 
all  who  knew  her,  with  many  rich  and  intelligent  suitors 
about  her,  she  had  chosen  to  wed  the  poor  and  obscure 
man  in  whose  genius  she  alone  believed,  and,  against 
the  advice  of  her  friends,  had  married  him,  and  gone  to 
the  lonely  Scotch  farm  to  be  practically  his  household 
servant;  there  she  had  spent  six  toilsome  years,  and  now 
they  had  come  to  London,  to  the  house  that  was  to  be 
her  home  until  death.  These  letters  cover  this  latter 
period,  of  the  household  affairs  of  which  they  contain 
a  complete  account.  Her  work  was  less  menial,  since 
they  kept  a  servant,  so  that  she  no  longer  had  to  mop  up 
her  own  floors;  but  the  tasks  set  her  were  difficult  and 
exhausting.  To  provide  meals  that  Carlyle  could  eat 
without  too  violent  storming  —  for,  as  she  said  in  Maz- 
zini's  phrase,  Carlyle  "loved  silence  somewhat  platon- 
ically";  to  shield  him  from  the  annoyances  of  visitors 
and  bad  servants;  to  rid  the  neighborhood,  by  ingenious 
diplomacy,  of  the  nuisances  of  ever-reappearing  parrots, 
dogs,  cocks,  and  the  like  enemies  of  sleep  and  medita- 
tion, her  own  as  well  as  his;  to  buy  his  clothes,  see  law- 
yers and  agents,  even  to  protest  against  his  high  taxes 
before  the  commissioners,  and,  in  all  possible  ways,  to 


172  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

save  his  money  at  the  expense  of  her  own  tastes  and 
even  of  her  health;  to  attend  to  refittings  of  the  house  by 
carpenters,  painters,  and  masons,  while  he  was  away 
on  his  summer  vacations;  in  brief,  to  spare  him  all  the 
ills  of  the  outer  world,  to  make  the  conditions  of  his 
work  favorable,  and  himself  as  comfortable  as  it  was 
possible  for  a  morose  dyspeptic  to  be,  and  at  the  same 
time  to  prevent  his  seeing  how  much  trouble  and  anx- 
iety it  cost  her  —  such  was  the  duty  prescribed  to 
herself  and  done  faithfully  for  years  without  complaint, 
amid  illnesses  not  light  nor  few,  which  were  "not  with- 
out their  good  uses,"  she  wrote,  because  she  arose  from 
them  "with  new  heart  for  the  battle  of  existence  —  what 
a  woman  means  by  new  heart,  not  new  brute  force,  as 
you  men  understand  it,  but  new  power  of  loving  and 
enduring."  In  this  effective  practical  life  she  tried  to 
repress  some  portion  of  her  womanly  nature,  for  she 
agreed,  verbally  at  least,  with  Carlyle's  disapproval  of 
"moods,"  "feelings,"  "sentiments,"  and  similar  phases 
of  emotion  not  resulting  in  work  done;  but  her  nature, 
being  pathetically  susceptible  to  these  forbidden  experi- 
ences, often  overruled  her  philosophy,  and  brought  the 
knowledge  of  her  solitude  home  to  her;  for  she  had  no 
direct  share  in  her  husband's  work,  no  marks  of  tender- 
ness from  him,  £tid  few  words  or  deeds  in  recognition  of 
her  sacrifices  for  him.  She  succeeded  only  too  well  in 
blinding  him  to  her  own  pain,  which  was,  indeed,  the 
easiest  of  her  tasks.  Her  words  on  Carlyle's  sending  her 
a  birthday  present  just  after  her  mother's  death  are  sig- 
nificant of  much  that  is  unsaid,  and  contain  the  explana- 
tion she  gave  to  herself  of  his  earlier  neglect.  "I  cannot 
tell  you,"  she  writes,  "how  wae  his  little  gift  made  me, 
as  well  as  glad;  it  was  the  first  thing  of  the  kind  he  ever 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS   FRIENDS  173 

gave  to  me  in  his  life.  In  great  matters  he  is  always 
kind  and  considerate;  but  these  little  attentions,  which 
we  women  attach  so  much  importance  to,  he  was  never 
in  the  habit  of  rendering  to  any  one;  his  up-bringing  and 
the  severe  turn  of  mind  he  has  from  nature  had  alike 
indisposed  him  toward  them.  And  now  the  desire  to 
replace  to  me  the  irreplaceable  makes  him  as  good  in 
little  things  as  he  used  to  be  in  great."  This  was  in  the 
sixteenth  year  after  marriage. 

There  was  a  limit,  however,  to  Mrs.  Carlyle's  power 
of  self-sacrifice.  Her  proud,  spirited,  sensitive  nature 
was  ever  reasserting  itself,  persistently  refusing  to  be  lost 
in  her  husband's  individuality.  She  thirsted  both  for 
expressed  recognition  and  for  expressed  affection.  In 
an  early  letter  to  Sterling  she  writes  thus:  "In  spite  of 
the  honestest  efforts  to  annihilate  my  I-ety  or  merge  it 
in  what  the  world  doubtless  considers  my  better  half,  I 
still  find  myself  a  self-subsisting  and,  alas!  self-seeking 
me.  Little  Felix  in  the  'Wanderjahre,'  when,  in  the  midst 
of  an  animated  scene  between  Wilhelm  and  Theresa, 
he  pulls  Theresa's  gown  and  calls  out,  'Mama  Theresa, 
I,  too,  am  here!'  only  speaks  out  with  the  charming 
trustfulness  of  a  little  child  what  I  am  perpetually  feel- 
ing, though  too  sophisticated  to  pull  people's  skirts,  or 
exclaim,  in  so  many  words,  'Mr.  Sterling,  I,  too,  am 
here!'"  The  recognition  which  she  desired  was  abun- 
dantly given  by  the  men  who  gathered  about  Carlyle, 
many  of  whom  were  more  attached  to  her  than  to  him; 
and  the  despised  "feelings"  found  an  outlet  in  brighten- 
ing various  miserable  lives,  poor  exiles  of  all  nations, 
unfortunate  maidens,  lost  children,  and,  in  general,  all 
people  in  affliction,  who  were  attracted  to  her,  she  said, 
as  straw  to  amber.  Notwithstanding  the  affection  and  de- 


174  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

votion  of  her  many  friends,  she  seems  to  have  remained 
lonely  at  heart;  but  she  kept  on  with  the  old  routine, 
while  the  "French  Revolution"  and  "Cromwell"  were 
being  written,  and  she  found  comfort,  if  not  content- 
ment, in  the  sense  of  fulfilled  duty  and  the  knowledge 
that  she  had  materially  helped  her  husband  in  her  silent 
way.  The  whisper  of  fame  grew  loud,  the  doors  of  the 
great  flew  open;  but  when  her  faith  in  Carlyle's  genius 
was  at  last  justified  and  her  hopes  for  him  realized,  some- 
thing happened  that  had  not  entered  into  her  calcula- 
tions. Carlyle  was  finding  the  sweetest  reward  in  the 
society  of  another  woman.  This  was  the  first  Lady 
Ashburton,  who  was  "the  cleverest  woman  out  of  sight" 
that  Mrs.  Carlyle  ever  saw,  and  at  whose  home,  a  center 
of  intellectual  society,  both  she  and  her  husband  often 
visited;  but  it  seems  that  in  London  the  wives  of  men 
of  genius,  like  the  wives  of  bishops,  do  not  take  the 
social  rank  of  their  husbands;  so  Froude  assures  us, 
and  Lady  Ashburton  made  the  fact  plain  to  Mrs.  Carlyle. 
The  result  was,  that,  toward  the  close  of  a  ten  years' 
acquaintance,  the  latter  grew  so  jealous  of  the  former's 
fascination  as  to  make  herself  very  wretched.  Miss 
Geraldine  Jewsbury,  her  most  intimate  friend,  explains 
the  affair  in  a  very  sensible  note.  She  says  that  any 
other  wife  would  have  laughed  at  Carlyle's  bewitchment, 
but  this  one,  seeing  Lady  Ashburton  admired  for  sayings 
and  doings  for  which  she  was  snubbed,  and  contrasting 
the  former's  grande-dame  manners  with  her  own  lonely 
endeavors  to  help  her  husband  and  serve  him  through 
years  of  hardship,  became  more  abidingly  and  intensely 
miserable  than  words  can  utter;  her  inmost  life  was  soli- 
tary, without  tenderness,  caresses,  or  loving  words  from 
him,  and  she  felt  that  her  love  and  life  were  laid  waste. 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  175 

All  this  she  willingly  endured  while  he  neglected  her  for 
his  work;  but  when  this  excuse  could  no  longer  be  made 
for  him,  the  strain  told  on  her,  and,  without  faltering  from 
her  purpose  of  helping  and  shielding  him,  she  became 
warped.  Such  is  Miss  Jewsbury's  account,  nearly  in 
her  own  words.  There  is  no  need  to  apportion  the 
blame  between  the  pair.  The  fact  is  that  Mrs.  Carlyle 
suffered,  and  that,  for  some  time  after  she  became  aware 
of  her  own  real  feeling,  her  letters  are  less  confidingly 
affectionate  in  regard  to  her  husband,  and  contain  more 
or  less  open  discontent  of  a  very  justifiable  kind.  After 
Lady  Ashburton's  death,  she  writes  to  him  as  follows: 
"I  have  neither  the  strength  and  spirits  to  bear  up  against 
your  discontent,  nor  the  obtuseness  to  be  indifferent  to  it. 
You  have  not  the  least  notion  what  a  killing  thought  it 
is  to  have  put  into  one's  heart,  gnawing  there  day  and 
night,  that  one  ought  to  be  dead,  since  one  can  no  longer 
make  the  same  exertions  as  formerly";  and  there  is 
more  to  the  same  effect,  to  which  Carlyle  affixes  his  note, 
"Alas!  alas!  sinner  that  I  am!"  Notwithstanding  such 
plain  words,  which  are  indeed  infrequent,  Mrs.  Carlyle 
still  guarded  her  husband,  standing  between  him  and  the 
objects  of  his  wrath,  "imitating,  in  a  small,  humble  way, 
the  Roman  soldier  who  gathered  his  arms  full  of  the 
enemy's  spears,  and  received  them  all  into  his  own 
breast,"  on  which  sentence  Carlyle  again  comments,  "Oh 
heavens,  the  comparison!  it  was  too  true."  As  time 
went  on  they  drew  together  more  closely.  The  second 
Lady  Ashburton  appeared,  who  became  very  dear  to  Mrs. 
Carlyle,  and  was  even  advised  by  her  to  "send  a  kiss"  to 
the  now  aging  philosopher.  Carlyle  himself  understood 
better  his  wife's  moods  and  needs,  though  still  imper- 
fectly, and  he  was  more  kind  in  word  and  more  thought- 


176  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

ful  in  act  than  of  old.  Thus,  at  last,  the  letters  conclude 
as  pleasantly  as  they  began,  with  Mrs.  Carlyle's  elation 
over  the  Edinburgh  triumph,  from  which  her  husband 
returned  to  find  her  dead. 

On  the  whole,  in  spite  of  appearances,  the  married 
life  here  laid  bare  was  not  an  exceptionally  unhappy 
one;  nor  does  it  seem  that  Carlyle's  neglect  of  his  wife 
sprang  from  any  moral  fault,  but  merely  from  his  native 
insensibility,  his  absorption  in  his  work,  and  that  un- 
conscious selfishness  which  is  ordinarily  induced  in  even 
the  best  men  by  persistent  silent  sacrifice  on  their  behalf. 
He  simply  did  not  see,  did  not  know,  did  not  under- 
stand his  wife's  trials  and  nature;  but  that  he  had  deep 
tenderness  in  his  heart  is  plain,  both  from  his  works, 
where  it  is  shown  imaginatively,  and  from  things  recorded 
of  his  own  acts  in  these  volumes  and  elsewhere.  That 
his  love  was  single  and  his  loyalty  entire  these  pitiful 
notes  amply  and  painfully  prove.  But  independently  of 
him  altogether,  Mrs.  Carlyle  deserves  remembrance  for 
her  own  sake,  not  merely  for  the  work  done  by  her  as 
a  true  wife,  nor  for  the  heroic  spirit  shown  in  the  doing 
it,  but  for  an  intrinsically  refined  and  gentle  nature,  the 
history  of  which  leaves  the  impression  that,  although  it 
always  remained  noble  and  attractive,  it  was  injured  by 
the  circumstances  amid  which  she  was  placed.  The  total 
effect  of  her  letters,  so  far  as  they  relate  to  herself,  goes 
to  confirm  Miss  Jewsbury's  summary,  that  athe  lines  in 
which  her  character  was  laid  down  were  very  grand,  but 
the  result  was  blurred  and  distorted  and  confused." 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  177 


VI 

The  literary  handling  of  the  mortal  career  of  Thomas 
Carlyle  has  exhibited  all  the  faults  of  which  biography  is 
capable.  It  has  long  been  understood  that  very  few 
men  can  write  their  own  lives  with  veracity.  Autobiog- 
raphies are  often  useful  because  they  exhibit  something 
of  personal  charm  or  make  tacit  confession  of  weak- 
nesses and  singularities,  as  a  genuine,  sincere,  vigorous 
character  does  in  his  real  human  intercourse;  but  they 
do  not  serve  in  the  place  of  formal  and  impartial  narrative 
of  events  and  the  view  of  personality  from  the  outside. 
A  man  in  the  course  of  his  life  suffers  many  changes;  his 
intellectual  and  frequently  his  moral  point  of  view  varies, 
and  with  each  decade  his  past  takes  on  a  new  perspective; 
he  can  never  reproduce  in  imagination,  still  less  in  mem- 
ory, what  he  was  as  he  was;  his  identity,  to  risk  a 
paradox,  is  self-effacing.  Carlyle,  in  writing  his  "Remi- 
niscences," was  peculiarly  at  a  disadvantage;  he  was  in  a 
mood  of  suffering,  and  he  saw  his  past  through  the  cloud 
of  recent  bereavement,  which  distorted  its  elements.  His 
genius  itself,  so  powerfully  imaginative,  and  his  emotion, 
which  seems  to  have  deprived  him  of  the  saving  faculty 
of  humor  in  some  portions  of  his  subject,  were  both 
against  him;  and,  besides,  he  was  an  old  man.  Of 
the  utmost  value  in  the  impersonal  parts  and  of  great 
moral  interest  in  all  that  concerns  himself  (so  far  as  his 
words  are  the  judgment  passed  by  a  man  upon  his  deeds 
at  the  close  of  his  career),  his  "Autobiography"  is  but  a 
small  part  of  the  material  for  his  "Life,"  and  is  directly  of 
worth  for  that  purpose  only  as  it  is  supported  by  the 
day-to-day  record  of  documents,  by  the  observation  of 


178  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

others,  and  by  his  own  books.  It  was  necessary  that 
some  one  else  should  undertake  the  task  of  examining 
and  reducing  the  copious  materials  which  were  in  exist- 
ence for  a  full  biography. 

Carlyle  was  scarcely  more  fortunate  in  his  choice  of 
one  to  intrust  this  labor  to  than  he  was  in  his  selection 
of  himself  as  the  scribe  of  his  works  and  days.  Froude, 
if  one  considers  only  the  judgment  of  the  man,  showed 
himself  lacking  not  only  in  reticence  and  tact,  but  in 
any  proper  understanding  of  the  nature  of  the  Carlyles. 
This  was  a  "grievous  fault,"  and  fatal  to  his  success  in 
the  mere  capacity  of  biographer.  The  trouble  is  not  so 
much  that  he  was  indiscreet,  and  told  more  of  the  truth 
than  good  taste  and  friendly  devotion  to  a  friend's  better 
self  would  warrant;  but  he  made  his  blabbing  disclosures 
without  right  discrimination,  and  so  presented  and  ar- 
ranged the  facts,  so  molded  them  with  his  own  mistaken 
conceptions,  and  colored  them  with  what  is  essentially 
prejudice,  that  they  served,  no  otherwise  than  as  did 
Carlyle's  own  autobiographical  writings,  to  give  wrong 
impressions.  The  facts  are  thrown  into  confusion  by 
the  brooding  of  Carlyle  in  the  one  case  and  the  per- 
version of  Froude  in  the  other. 

So  much  has  been  clear  this  long  time,  but  it  now 
appears  that  Froude  was  guilty  of  gross  negligence  in 
his  editorial  work,  as  has  been  brought  out  by  the  com- 
parison of  the  original  materials  with  his  printed  tran- 
scripts; and  he  is  further  charged  with  warping  the 
narrative  by  giving  to  certain  parts  of  it  a  bias  unfavor- 
able to  the  Carlyles,  in  the  face  of  the  evidence  before 
him.  The  only  inference  to  be  drawn  is,  that  he  was 
equally  as  careless  in  reading  and  sifting  the  original 
manuscripts  as  he  was  in  attending  to  their  correct 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  179 

publication.  The  case  against  him  is  strong  enough  to 
convict.  It  is  Carlyle,  however,  and  not  Froude  for 
whom  the  world  feels  concern.  Both  the  "Autobiography" 
and  the  authorized  "Life"  have  elements  of  untrust- 
worthiness  in  them  as  records  of  the  exact  truth  of 
events  and  as  portrayals  of  characters.  Under  the  cir- 
cumstances, what  is  there  left  for  a  friend  of  Carlyle  who 
feels  the  injustice  of  this  state  of  the  case  to  the  prin- 
cipals involved,  except  to  publish  faithfully  such  of  the 
originals  as  may  give  to  the  public  opportunity  to  correct, 
at  first  hand,  the  opinions  formed  on  the  grounds  of 
Carlyle's  confession  and  Froude's  narrative? 

This  is  the  task  which  Professor  Norton  charged  him- 
self with.  He  attempts  no  narrative;  he  merely  prints 
seriatim  letters  of  Carlyle.  At  first  these  are  the  letters 
of  a  youth  to  two  or  three  college  mates,  to  his  parents 
and  brothers,  and  to  the  young  lady  whom  he  was  des- 
tined to  marry.  They  are  the  expression  of  a  dutiful 
son  and  brother  and  of  an  interested  friend,  in  regard  to 
matters  of  family  concern,  his  own  health,  his  studies, 
pursuits,  prospects;  they  are  no  more  than  this,  for  even 
in  those  letters  to  Jane  Welsh  which  Professor  Norton 
has  thought  it  not  unbecoming  to  publish,  with  one  ex- 
ception, Carlyle  is  the  student  and  not  distinctly  the 
lover.  He  was  engaged  during  these  years  either  in 
teaching  school  or  in  private  tutoring,  with  literature  in 
the  shape  of  hackwork  slowly  taking  more  and  more  of 
his  time  to  its  special  service,  until  in  the  last  year  he 
was  fully  in  the  harness  as  a  professional  translator.  It 
is  not  to  be  expected  that  he  would  have  much  of  conse- 
quence to  communicate,  and,  so  far  as  intrinsic  worth 
goes,  we  must  frankly  say  there  is  little  in  these  epistles 
that  need  detain  the  attention  of  men.  It  is  singular 


i8o  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

that  there  should  be  so  slight  intimation  of  any  formed 
opinions;  the  young  Edinburgher,  periodically  returning 
to  the  folks  at  home,  read  a  great  deal  and  thought 
about  it,  estimated  it,  wrote  it  out  in  the  way  of  biography 
and  translation,  but  had  practically  nothing  of  his  own 
to  say;  or  at  any  rate  he  did  not  intrust  his  meditations 
to  letters.  His  mind  was  not  developed.  Carlyle,  in 
the  thoughts  by  which  the  world  knows  him,  was  not 
there. 

What  was  there,  however,  was  Carlyle's  temperament. 
The  native  endowment  of  the  youth  stands  out  all  the 
clearer  because  unconfused  with  any  opinions.  What 
this  was  is  well  enough  understood:  a  quick  eye  for  the 
oddities  of  human  nature;  a  sound  judgment  of  men, 
seemingly  intuitive  in  its  operation,  but  owing  much  to 
his  inherited  moral  perceptiveness ;  ready  intelligence, 
and  a  susceptibility  to  the  poetic  and  the  grotesque  in 
man's  life,  so  fruitful  in  later  years;  and,  above  all,  the 
moral  sense  which  was  the  main  feeder  of  his  genius. 
These  things  are  to  be  felt  continuously  in  his  letters. 
Something  of  his  style  is  also  observable  —  lacking  in 
brilliancy  and  power,  but  essentially  there.  For  the  rest, 
the  only  other  thing  which  belongs  to  the  indubitable 
Carlyle  of  fame  is  his  dyspepsia.  He  writes  of  it  from 
the  first  with  an  objurgatory  vigor  which  has  more  of  the 
distinct  prophecy  of  his  future  in  it  than  anything  else 
to  be  found  in  the  volumes  and  it  is  abundantly  manifest, 
whether  altogether  because  of  this  early  and  painful  in- 
fliction or  not,  that  he  was  an  irritable  person  to  live 
with,  sharp-spoken,  querulous,  and  hard-grained.  He 
was  proud  toward  the  world,  discontented,  and  ambi- 
tious; his  own  opinion  of  himself,  happily  justified  by 
the  event,  was  fully  sufficient  to  sustain  him  in  times  of 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  181 

difficulty  and  struggle  of  heart  and  hope,  and  he  was 
fully  conscious  of  his  superiority  at  all  points. 

His  letters  to  his  parents,  and  their  replies,  are  by 
far  the  most  interesting;  but  less  on  Carlyle's  account 
than  as  a  picture  of  Scotch  life.  This  special  value  was 
one  reason  why  Professor  Norton  included  so  large  a 
number  of  the  family  letters.  The  letters  to  Miss  Welsh 
are  mostly  letters  of  advice  respecting  composition,  with- 
out any  marked  character,  and  those  of  them  which  are 
not  in  the  vein  of  "the  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend" 
are  not  very  significant.  The  total  value  of  the  collec- 
tion, consequently,  is,  as  has  been  said,  not  great 
in  itself.  A  hard-headed  young  Scotchman,  well-met 
among  his  few  friends,  attached  to  his  kin,  and  bound  to 
get  on  by  literature  in  which  he  had  the  wit  to  find  the 
best  —  such  was  Carlyle  from  the  close  of  his  boyhood 
to  his  marriage  in  full  manhood.  His  character,  had  he 
ended  then,  would  have  been  nothing  to  the  world. 

The  points  in  which  the  story,  here  spread  before  the 
reader  in  the  original  documents,  differs  from  the  account 
rendered  by  Froude  in  his  own  words,  relate  to  the  nature 
and  relations  of  a  few  persons.  They  have  no  imme- 
diate intellectual  interest;  in  fact,  the  whole  subject  be- 
longs in  the  region  of  world  gossip,  which  differs  from 
village  gossip  only  in  the  eminence  of  the  persons  involved. 
It  was  inevitable,  after  Froude's  publication,  but  it  was 
no  less  unfortunate,  that  public  attention  should  be  di- 
verted from  the  intellectual  history  of  Carlyle  to  the 
special  point  whether  he  treated  his  wife  well.  The 
moral  ideals  of  Carlyle  were  neglected,  the  history  of  their 
genesis  and  development  fell  far  into  the  background,  and 
the  question  now  asked  was,  What  was  his  own  moral 
practice  in  daily  life?  It  is  a  pertinent  inquiry  in  the 


182  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

cases  of  all  men  who  assume  to  be  public  teachers;  it  is 
often  a  useful  one.  But  in  Carlyle's  case  it  is  complicated 
by  the  fact  that,  in  the  particulars  in  which  it  is  commonly 
held  that  he  failed  of  manliness,  he  seems  to  have  been 
unconscious  of  his  errors  at  the  time  of  committing  them. 
Defects  of  nature,  rather  than  dereliction  of  duty,  are 
brought  out  in  his  family  history;  he  was  hard,  selfish, 
and  dull  in  some  matters,  but  he  was  too  much  absorbed 
in  his  own  life  to  be  habitually  conscious  of  these  faults, 
though  he  was  aware  of  them  momentarily  from  time  to 
time.  His  wrong-doing  in  these  respects  began  early. 
He  indulged  his  weaknesses  of  temper  amid  his  own 
people,  and  often  expressed  contrition  in  words  which 
plainly  apply,  not  to  single  acts,  but  to  a  general  course  of 
conduct. 

The  main  question,  however,  in  these  early  years  of 
his  life  concerns  the  position  of  Edward  Irving  in  the 
group,  and  the  circumstances  which  led  to  Carlyle's  en- 
gagement with  Miss  Welsh  and  the  feelings  which  the 
lovers  entertained  towards  each  other.  Froude  inspires 
the  belief  that  Miss  Welsh's  attachment  to  Irving  was  of 
a  deep  and  lasting  kind,  and  that  it  remained  in  her  heart 
in  the  state  of  a  blighted  affection.  This  circumstance, 
he  says,  Carlyle  did  not  realize.  Secondly,  he  intimates 
that  the  marriage  was  brought  to  pass  by  the  interference 
of  others,  whose  action  at  least  hastened  it;  that  Carlyle 
exhibited  a  selfish  temper  in  the  preliminary  arrange- 
ments for  a  home,  and  showed  himself  in  other  ways  some- 
thing less  than  a  man  of  sense  and  breeding.  Professor 
Norton  controverts  Froude  on  all  these  points,  which  he 
treats  of  in  his  appendix.  The  evidence,  so  far  as  it  is 
contained  in  the  Carlyle  love-letters,  is  not  before  the 
public;  but  Professor  Norton,  while  withholding  it, 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  183 

clearly  states  that  in  his  opinion  this  correspondence 
affords  a  view  of  Carlyle's  and  Jane  Welsh's  characters 
and  mutual  relations  "different  both  in  particulars  and 
general  effect  from  that  given  by  Mr.  Froude."  So  far 
as  Irving  is  involved,  Carlyle,  while  mentioning  him  with 
friendliness,  has  a  clear  eye  for  his  foolishness,  as  he 
thinks  it;  and  Miss  Welsh,  Professor  Norton  says,  came 
to  see  "his  essential  weakness  —  his  vanity,  his  mawkish 
sentimentality,  his  self-deception,  his  extravagance  verg- 
ing to  cant  in  matters  of  religion."  This  seems  to  put 
an  end  to  any  notion  that  in  her  wedded  life  she  compared 
her  lot  with  Carlyle  to  "what  might  have  been." 

The  letters  in  the  second  portion  of  Professor  Norton's 
collection  are  in  nearly  all  cases  written  to  members  of  his 
family,  and  portions  of  a  few  of  them  were  included,  with 
many  errors,  in  Froude's  "Life."  They  afford  a  complete 
view  of  Carlyle's  interests,  labors,  and  temperament  at  an 
important  and  trying  period  of  his  life,  and  amply  justify 
the  hopes  that  such  an  epistolary  autobiography  would 
give  not  only  a  much  needed  correction  of  the  false  im- 
pressions made  by  Froude's  method  of  dealing  with  his 
materials,  but  an  entertaining  and  useful  story  of  Carlyle's 
growth  and  nature.  The  most  striking  general  feature  of 
the  letters  is  their  simple  and  almost  humble  tone. 
Froude,  by  selecting  for  publication  the  most  highly 
colored  passages,  and  especially  those  most  affected  by 
emotion,  melancholy,  or  picturesqueness  of  style,  made 
his  narrative  altogether  too  high-strung.  The  larger  mass 
of  ordinary  letters  is  needed  to  give  proper  relief  to  such 
moments  of  feeling.  Carlyle's  relations  with  his  family 
—  and  these  were  the  most  vital  and  intimate  of  his  life- 
relations —  were  natural  and  healthy;  and  they  were  in 
the  highest  degree  honorable  to  him.  One  would  look  in 


184  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

vain  for  a  better  example  of  filial  or  brotherly  affection 
constantly  alive,  conscientious,  and  helpful.  He  was 
interested  in  the  doings  and  fortunes  of  all,  not  in  a  gen- 
erally sympathetic,  but  a  specific  and  practical  way,  and 
he  knew  no  difference  between  the  "  Doc  tor"  at  Rome  and 
Naples  and  poor  "Alick"  struggling  on  his  farm,  under  the 
hopeless  conditions  and  hard  surroundings  of  Scottish 
agriculture.  He  was  always  anxious  to  give  and  receive 
merely  personal  news,  shared  in  their  ventures  and  trials, 
and  was  ready  with  advice  and  encouragement. 

The  more  interesting  part  is  naturally  the  expression 
of  the  attachment  between  himself  and  his  aged  and 
pious  mother,  as  it  also  exhibits  character  in  a  very 
pure  form.  Carlyle's  mother,  indeed,  with  her  worry- 
ings  over  the  children  and  her  trust  in  God,  her  learning 
to  write  from  him  and  her  painful  exercise  of  the  pen, 
her  reading  of  his  books  and  articles,  her  limited  ex- 
perience beyond  the  Ecclefechan  horizon,  and  her  look- 
ing forward  to  the  annual  meeting  with  her  son,  is  the 
most  prominent  character  in  the  correspondence;  and 
whenever  he  writes  to  her,  the  page  is  brighter  for  the 
beauty  and  tenderness  of  the  relationship.  To  have 
brought  out  fully  the  fact  of  this  tie,  which  was  so  large 
an  element  in  Carlyle's  human  life,  is  sufficient  reward; 
but  when  to  this  is  added  the  spirit  of  the  whole  united 
family,  struggling  to  live  independently  and  worthily,  and 
to  better  themselves  and  each  other  according  to  their 
opportunities,  a  great  deal  has  been  added  to  our  knowl- 
edge of  the  good  in  Carlyle's  days. 

Next  to  this  undiminished  and  simple  family  affection 
and  helpfulness  in  Carlyle,  one  notes  particularly  his 
kindness  to  those  whom  he  could  in  any  useful  way 
assist.  He  was  hospitable  really  to  any  sincere  and 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  185 

honest  young  man,  and  did  not  limit  his  interest  to  liter- 
ary youths.  He  was  willing  to  do  a  good  turn  by  the 
way  to  very  humble  and  ordinary  folk.  The  capital 
instance  of  his  kindness,  however,  in  these  letters,  is  his 
attention  to  poor  Glen,  a  disciple  of  his  whose  mind 
failed.  He  read  Homer  with  him  —  much  to  his  own 
pleasure,  it  is  true,  but  that  does  not  lessen  the  virtue 
of  the  act,  and  he  was  attentive,  so  far  as  was  in  his 
power,  to  his  comfort  and  bettering.  To  Irving,  too, 
his  spirit  is  admirable  in  patience  and  love.  The  victim 
of  what  Carlyle  most  abhorred,  he  nevertheless  was  not 
suffered  to  become  alienated  from  his  heart,  and  Carlyle's 
pictures  of  the  wretched  condition  of  his  friend  are 
more  full  of  sorrow  than  of  the  contempt  he  must  have 
felt  for  the  results  of  such  a  life  as  Irving  came  to  lead. 
Towards  Jeffrey,  also,  though  one  perceives  the  gradually 
widening  rift  between  the  two,  Carlyle  maintained  as 
appreciative  and  grateful  an  attitude  as  was  to  be  ex- 
pected. Jeffrey  himself  nowhere  in  our  accounts  of  him 
stands  forth  so  amiably  and  acceptably  as  here.  He 
was  kind  and  helpful,  according  to  his  lights,  when 
Carlyle  needed  friends,  and  will  be  so  most  pleasantly 
remembered.  Mill's  friendship  and  considerate  services 
also  are  truly  rendered,  and,  on  the  whole,  one  gets  the 
impression  that  he  was  a  truer  and  more  interested 
friend  than  the  correspondence  properly  shows.  These 
are  the  principal  human  elements  in  the  letters,  outside 
of  the  family  concerns,  and  they  give  an  impression  of 
general  kindliness  and  good-will  in  the  air  —  the  very 
thing  which  Froude  most  left  out. 

Carlyle  himself  is  egoistical  as  always;  absorbed  in 
himself,  in  his  genius  and  its  expression  so  much  as 
to  lend  disproportion  to  the  world  of  men  outside  him, 


1 86  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

which  he  always  beheld  with  a  queer  distortion.  The 
keenness  of  his  physical  eye  seems  to  have  partly  blinded 
him  to  moral  and  intellectual  character  less  immediately 
and  continually  shown,  and  his  proneness  to  a  deprecia- 
tory judgment  disturbed  his  little  faculty  of  toleration. 
His  mood  was  that  of  the  prophet,  and  he  carried  it 
to  the  dinner-table,  where  it  does  not  belong.  The  diffi- 
culty he  found  in  obtaining  expression  for  his  genius 
doubtless  contributed  to  this  oblique  view  of  ordinary 
human  life.  The  necessity  he  seems  under  of  talking  to 
himself,  as  a  driver  does  to  his  horse,  to  keep  his  courage 
up,  is  as  obvious  in  all  these  letters  as  in  any  others. 
He  preached  to  his  own  soul  as  pertinaciously  as  to  the 
world,  and  in  the  same  words.  This  strain,  this  un- 
ceasing reminder  to  himself  to  fear  God  and  respect  not 
men's  judgments  or  ways,  keeps  on  independent  of  his 
progress.  He  gradually  left  behind  the  schemes  of  tak- 
ing professorships  and  lecturing,  he  burned  his  failures 
in  literature,  and  came  to  a  sure  conviction  as  to  his  place 
and  work,  and  the  fate  he  was  subject  to  of  staying  put, 
but  without  finding  it  easier  to  do  so  without  self- 
declamation. 

It  is  hardly  fanciful  to  say  that  these  apostrophes  to 
himself  and  "lashings"  of  moral  feeling  were  to  him 
what,  in  another  age  and  with  other  modes  of  the  same 
faith,  prayer  and  "wrestlings"  would  have  been.  They 
were  his  spiritual  resource  and  the  language  of  them. 
But  in  a  certain  way  the  constant  repetition  of  these 
phrases  and  the  fluency  of  these  "communings"  serve 
an  end.  It  was  one  result  of  the  publication  of  his 
opinions  upon  men  and  of  his  family  history  to  turn 
attention  from  his  works  to  his  life;  and  it  is  well  to 
find  that  the  principles  he  preached  were  those  he  lived 


CARLYLE   AND   HIS    FRIENDS  187 

by,  that  they  were  self-derived,  genuine  and  native  to 
his  own  struggles,  and  to  observe  in  what  way  they  oper- 
ated in  himself  from  day  to  day  and  year  to  year.  The 
sight  of  struggle  in  its  real  forms,  of  tragedy  unsoftened 
and  unilluminated  by  the  poetic  spirit,  is  never  pleasant; 
hard  features  are  as  disagreeable  in  a  life  as  in  a  face, 
and  in  Carlyle's  biography  this  element  is  trying  always. 
But,  although  in  these  letters  all  this  must  enter,  being 
a  part  of  the  truth,  yet  the  value  of  Professor  Norton's 
work,  which  is  that  of  a  just  friend  as  well  as  of  a 
laborious  editor,  is  that  it  lowers  the  relief  of  these  hard 
lines,  and  shows  more  fully  the  kindliness,  the  fidelity, 
and  the  true-heartedness  of  Carlyle,  in  which  his  man- 
hood lay  quite  as  much  as  in  his  self-rallying  courage, 
his  indignation  at  feebleness  and  folly,  and  his  unchar- 
itableness  when  his  affections  were  not  concerned.  These 
volumes  show  his  private  life  with  those  nearest  and 
dearest  to  him,  apart  from  his  genius,  and  in  this  way 
-which  is  the  way  of  truth  — serve  his  memory  as 
his  friends  would  wish. 


EDWARD  FITZGERALD 

EDWARD  FITZGERALD,  without  being  essential  to  the 
literary  history  of  his  time,  has  made  to  it  the  very  real 
contribution  of  a  pleasant  memory.  If  these  letters  had 
unfortunately  perished,  his  name  would  have  allured  the 
imagination  of  lovers  of  literature  eager  to  know  more 
of  this  shy,  eccentric,  modest  man,  the  writer  in  his  youth 
of  a  poem  that  Lamb  envied  him,  and  in  age  of  a  trans- 
lation that  added  almost  an  original  classic  to  English, 
the  life-long  friend  of  Tennyson,  Thackeray,  and  Sped- 
ding.  The  publication  of  his  correspondence,  however, 
has  dispelled  the  mystery  and  disclosed  the  man  in  his 
tastes,  friendships,  peculiarities  —  the  whole  range  of  his 
"innocent  far-niente  life"  as  it  seemed  to  Carlyle.  One 
recurs  after  reading  these  pages  to  Tennyson's  dedica- 
tory poem  addressed  to  Fitzgerald  —  perhaps  the  poet's 
most  masterly  piece  of  light  verse  —  only  to  be  surprised 
at  the  truth  of  the  characterization  there  given.  There 
is  nothing  in  these  letters  so  fine  as  the  picture  in  those 
opening  stanzas  of  "Old  Fitz"  in  his  "suburb-grange," 
with  the  rosy-footed  doves  flying  about  and  perching 
upon  him;  but  there  are  many  touches  that  bring  his 
temperament  and  life  before  us  with  a  similar  vividness 
and  felicity.  And  the  rest  of  Tennyson's  poem  —  the 
vegetarianism  of  his  friend,  "that  large  infidel,  your 
Omar,"  and  even  the  discontent  of  Fitzgerald  with  the 
work  of  the  Laureate,  after  1842,  so  deftly  glanced  at 
in  the  last  lines: 

189 , 


igo  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

"When,  in  our  younger  London  days, 
You  found  some  merit  in  my  rhymes, 
And  I  more  pleasure  in  your  praise"  — 

all  this  is  amplified  and  illustrated,  with  much  besides, 
just  as  the  leisurely  reader  of  Tennyson  might  wish  it. 
The  memoir  has  this  poetical  atmosphere;  the  life  itself, 
an  English  country  life,  reminds  one  of  what  Fitzgerald 
writes  of  the  County  of  Suffolk  —  "Now  I  say  that  all 
this  shows  that  we  in  this  Suffolk  are  not  so  completely 
given  over  to  prose  and  turnips  as  some  would  have  us. 
I  always  said  that,  being  near  the  sea,  and  being  able  to 
catch  a  glimpse  of  it  from  the  tops  of  hills  and  of  houses, 
redeemed  Suffolk  from  dullness,  and  at  all  events  that  our 
turnip  fields,  dull  in  themselves,  were  at  least  set  all 
round  with  an  undeniably  poetic  element." 

Tennyson  does  not  touch  at  all  upon  Fitzgerald's 
most  marked  trait.  He  was  an  Englishman  of  the  closest 
attachment  to  things  English.  He  never  went  out  of  the 
country  but  once,  and  then  to  the  Netherlands,  where 
he  had  a  miserable  sojourn,  and  he  was  thankful  beyond 
most  travelers  when  he  got  home  again.  He  began  life 
with  this  strong  prepossession  in  an  acute  form.  It 
breaks  out  early  in  life,  when  he  excepts  only  Raphael 
for  admiration  among  foreign  artists,  and  he  sums  up 
the  matter  on  the  side  of  art  at  once  —  "To  depict  the 
true  old  English  gentleman  is  as  great  a  work  as  to  depict 
a  Saint  John,  and  I  think  in  my  heart  I  would  rather 
have  the  former  than  the  latter."  The  most  complete 
expression  of  his  patriotic  feeling  is  a  real  British  burst, 
as  characteristic  as  American  spread-eagleism:  "Well, 
say  as  you  will,  there  is  not  and  never  was  such  a  country 
as  old  England  —  never  were  there  such  a  Gentry  as 
the  English.  They  will  be  the  distinguishing  Mark  and 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  191 

Glory  of  England  in  History,  as  the  Arts  were  of  Greece, 
and  War  of  Rome.  I  am  sure  no  travel  would  carry  me 
to  any  land  so  beautiful  as  the  good  sense,  justice,  and 
liberality  of  my  good  countrymen  make  this."  He 
even  writes  to  Frederick  Tennyson  abroad  that  he  hopes 
the  English  travelers  are  "as  proud  and  disagreeable  as 
ever."  He  naturally  thought  the  country  was  going  to 
the  dogs.  He  was  not  a  Jingoist:  he  thinks,  on  the  con- 
trary, that  the  world  may  justly  resent  British  inter- 
ference "all  over  the  Globe/'  and  piously  wishes  that 
England  were  a  "little,  peaceful,  unambitious,  trading 
nation  like  —  the  Dutch!"  Even  his  taste  in  music  was 
affected:  "I  grow  every  day  more  and  more  to  love  only 
the  old  'God  Save  the  King'  style." 

The  point  must  be  insisted  upon  because  this  British 
instinct  lay  at  the  roots  of  his  content  with  a  voluntarily 
restricted  life.  He  had,  besides,  a  bent  for  eccentricity. 
He  early  declares  that  he  has  made  a  discovery  for  him- 
self and  is  going  to  be  "a  great  bear."  Used  though 
the  phrase  is  with  youthful  exaggeration  and  humor,  it 
marks  the  turn  of  his  nature,  and  in  a  sense  he  fulfilled 
the  prediction.  Of  his  boyhood  we  learn  nothing,  as 
he  was  well  out  of  college  when  he  began  the  congenial 
habit  of  writing  these  friendly  letters,  which  from  the 
first  are  remarkable  for  literary  judgment  and  are  warm 
with  true  feeling.  He  was  then,  however,  no  more  than 
a  reader  of  books  and  a  collector  of  fine  poems  from  the 
best  writers  for  his  private  Parnassus.  One  confidential 
passage  gives  a  strangely  vivid  sense  of  how  the  young 
of  each  generation  start  together.  He  has  been  writing 
of  Tennyson,  who  had  been  visiting  him  and  keeping 
him  laughing  with  his  "droll"  little  humors  and  "grumpi- 
nesses,"  and  he  goes  on  to  say  that  he  felt  a  "sense  of 


I92  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

depression  at  times  from  the  overshadowing  of  a  so  much 
more  lofty  intellect  than  my  own;  this  (though  it  may 
seem  vain  to  say  so)  I  never  experienced  before,  though 
I  have  often  been  with  much  greater  intellects;  but  I 
could  not  be  mistaken  in  the  universality  of  his  mind; 
and  perhaps  I  have  derived  some  benefit  in  the  now 
more  distinct  consciousness  of  my  dwarfishness."  He 
was  then  twenty-six  and  Tennyson  was  his  junior  by  a 
year.  Most  of  what  is  told  of  his  younger  days  comes 
in  the  way  of  reminiscence  in  after  life.  Among  these 
anecdotes  one,  drawn  out  by  Spedding's  death,  is  very 
lifelike.  He  and  Tennyson  visited  Spedding  at  his 
father's  house,  and  the  elder  Spedding  is  described  as 
not  altogether  pleased  at  the  sight  of  his  son  consulting 
with  the  poet  over  the  "Morte  d'Arthur,"  "Lord  of  Bur- 
leigh,"  and  other  pieces  then  in  MS.  Unfortunately  he 
had  known  Shelley,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and  other 
"poets"  without  esteeming  them,  and  as  Fitzgerald 
played  chess  with  Mrs.  Spedding,  and  the  daffodils 
danced  outside  the  hall-door  —  "Well,  Mr.  F.,"  he 
would  say,  "Mr.  Tennyson  reads  and  Jem  criticises;  is 
that  it?"  But,  notwithstanding  the  banter,  he  was  kind 
enough  to  his  son's  friends.  Such  little  pictures  are  one 
of  the  traits  of  the  book. 

It  was  not  long  before  these  friends  submitted  to  the 
common  fate  and  were  separated  by  the  different  tenor 
of  their  lives.  They  met  occasionally,  but  they  did  not 
live  together;  Fitzgerald  was  the  only  one  who  liked  to 
send  friendly  letters,  and  so  communication  lessened  to 
one  epistle  a  year,  and  died  out  altogether.  He  went 
to  live  in  the  country,  in  a  damp  lodge  outside  his  father's 
park,  and  he  always  had  such  bachelor  quarters.  He  was 
intimate  at  first  with  old  Bernard  Barton,  the  Quaker 


EDWARD   FITZGERALD  193 

poet,  whom,  we  believe,  Lamb  advised  to  throw  himself 
over  a  precipice  rather  than  cultivate  the  muse;  and 
afterwards  he  liked  to  visit  with  the  parson,  a  son  of 
the  poet  Crabbe.  Fitzgerald  is  described  then  as  being 
a  grave  man,  middle-aged  at  thirty-six,  not  seemingly 
very  happy,  though  amusing  at  times  in  conversation. 
He  rose  early,  read  or  wrote  standing  at  a  desk,  had  his 
dinner  of  vegetables  and  pudding,  walked  with  his  Skye 
terrier,  and  ended  the  evening  with  the  Bartons  or  the 
Crabbes,  singing  glees  with  the  children  at  the  latter 
house  and  joining  the  parson  over  his  cigar.  He  did  not 
visit  with  the  neighboring  gentry.  He  describes  it  all 
himself:  "A  little  Bedfordshire  —  a  little  Northampton 
—  a  little  more  folding  of  the  hands  —  the  same  faces  — 
the  same  fields  —  the  same  thoughts  occurring  at  the 
same  turns  of  road  —  this  is  all  I  have  to  tell  of;  nothing 
at  all  added  —  but  the  summer  gone."  As  for  "Alfred," 
he  adds,  "hydropathy  has  done  its  worst;  he  writes  the 
names  of  his  friends  in  water." 

But  this  was  not  as  empty  a  life  as  it  seems;  vegetarian 
though  he  was,  "none  could  say  that  Lenten  fare  made 
Lenten  thought."  He  had  many  interests  of  the  culti- 
vated man.  He  had  been  fond  of  the  theater  and  con- 
cert in  London,  and  he  was  still  devoted  to  music;  he 
was  a  buyer  of  pictures,  and  full  of  enthusiasm  for  those 
he  liked,  and  he  cultivated  the  acquaintance  of  Lawrence. 
The  stream  of  some  friendship  never  ceased  to  brighten 
the  ways  he  walked  in;  and  in  books  and  nature  he  had 
as  large  a  liberty  as  is  often  conferred  on  a  man.  The 
touches  of  nature  are  not  infrequent  in  these  jottings 
down  of  his  moments,  and  they  are  often  exquisite  in 
feeling:  "I  am  going  this  evening  to  eat  toasted  cheese 
with  that  celebrated  poet,  Bernard  Barton.  ...  It 


194  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

blows  a  harrico,  as  Theodore  Hook  used  to  say,  and  will 
rain  before  I  get  to  Woodbridge.  Those  poor,  mistaken 
lilac-buds  there  out  of  the  window!  and  an  old  robin, 
ruffled  up  to  his  thickest,  sitting  mournfully  under  them, 
quite  disheartened!"  Or  again,  in  London,  he  writes: 
"I  feel  pleasure  in  dipping  down  into  the  country  and 
rubbing  my  hand  over  the  cool  dew  of  the  pastures,  as 
it  were."  But  such  tender  directness  of  description  or 
felicity  in  phrase  is  a  constant  quantity,  and  belonged 
so  much  to  his  mind  that  he  could  not  help  blabbing  out 
his  delight.  We  quote  a  few  more  lines,  less  for  the  pic- 
ture than  the  style;  he  had  put  away  all  books  except 
Omar,  but  this,  he  says,  "I  could  not  help  looking  over 
in  a  paddock  covered  with  buttercups  and  brushed  by  a 
delicious  breeze,  while  a  dainty  racing  filly  of  W.  Browne's 
came  startling  up  to  wonder  and  snuff  about  me."  For 
feeling  like  this  expressed  so  well,  one  goes  back  far  in 
literary  taste,  and  in  such  passages  we  recognize  the  Eng- 
lish that  Tennyson  praised  so  highly  in  speaking  of 
the  boat-race  in  "Euphranor";  it  is  —  what  so  little  de- 
scription of  nature  now  is  —  free  from  self-consciousness, 
and  not  by  design,  but  by  the  character  of  the  writer. 

One  is  prepared  to  hear  that  Fitzgerald's  tastes  were 
not  those  of  his  generation  in  the  case  of  many  of  the 
more  notable  authors.  The  most  striking  instance  is 
that  of  Tennyson.  He  did  not  like  "The  Princess,"  nor 
"In  Memoriam,"  nor  the  "Idyls,"  nor  the  dramas;  he 
wished  that  there  had  been  nothing  after  the  1842  volume, 
or  he  seems  to  fancy  that  he  wished  it;  the  poems  after 
that  date  were  below  their  author's  destiny  —  that  is 
apparently  the  feeling  which  underlies  his  judgment. 
But  he  expressed  himself  with  great  freedom:  "  'In 
Memoriam,' "  he  says,  "has  the  air  of  being  evolved  by 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  195 

a  Poetical  Machine  of  the  highest  order;  ...  the  Im- 
petus, the  Lyrical  oestrus,  is  gone."  He  asks  what  it 
can  do  except  make  all  of  us  "sentimental."  His  last 
word  almost  is  that  Tennyson's  genius  has  been  injured 
by  over-elaboration.  It  made  no  difference 'to  him  that 
other  friends  told  him  that  this  was  perverseness,  and  that 
no  one  agreed  with  him.  One  part  of  the  secret  has 
just  been  hinted  at:  he  worshiped  —  it  is  hardly  too 
strong  a  word  —  Tennyson's  power;  he  thought  it  was 
wasted  on  inadequate  objects.  This  is  the  one  human 
enthusiasm  of  the  book.  If  he  reads  of  Thucydides  at 
Amphipolis,  it  is  to  burst  out  with,  "Fancy  old  Hallam 
sticking  to  his  gun  at  a  Martello  Tower  This  was  the 
way  to  write  well;  and  the  way  to  make  literature  re- 
spectable. Oh,  Alfred  Tennyson,  could  you  but  have 
the  luck  to  be  put  to  such  employment  No  man  would 
do  it  better;  a  more  heroic  figure  to  head  the  defenders 
of  his  country  could  not  be."  He  wishes  for  Tennyson's 
voice  to  awake  "Marathonian  men"  instead  of  "mum- 
bling" over  "The  Princess"  and  "In  Memoriam."  He 
longs  "to  take  twenty  years  off  Alfred's  shoulders, 
and  set  him  up  in  his  youthful  glory.  .  .  .  He  is  the 
same  magnanimous,  kindly,  delightful  fellow  as  ever, 
uttering  by  far  the  finest  prose  sayings  of  any  one." 
There  is  no  cooling  of  loyalty,  one  perceives,  only  the 
feeling  that  the  performance  is  less  than  it  should  have 
been,  the  man  more  than  his  work. 

This,  no  doubt,  counts  in  analyzing  the  unfavorable 
criticism  of  Fitzgerald;  but  it  was  also  the  fact  (and 
here  lies  the  other  half  of  the  secret),  that  Fitzgerald's 
literary  taste  was  distinctly  old-fashioned  —  not  modern, 
not  contemporary  at  all,  but  in  a  strict  sense  was  classi- 
cal, and  proceeded  upon  the  universal  canon  of  literature. 


196  LITERARY  MEMOIRS 

It  is  not  meant,  of  course,  that  he  was  confined  to  Latin 
and  Greek  standards  as  expressed  in  ancient  literature, 
but  to  the  universal  standard  common  to  all  great  litera- 
ture. Tennyson  met  his  simple  and  pure  taste  and  his 
unromantic  (but  not  unpoetic)  nature,  in  much;  but  in 
his  later  and  pronounced  manner  he  offended  Fitzgerald's 
taste,  both  in  matter  and  style.  Other  poets  yet  more 
strictly  bound  to  their  times  and  themselves  than  Tenny- 
son naturally  meet  with  no  mercy  at  Fitzgerald's  bar. 
He  swept  them  —  left  nameless  in  these  letters  —  to 
the  namelessness  that  these  blanks  foretell,  with  as  abso- 
lute a  fiat  as  Carlyle  ever  used  in  similar  cases.  There 
is,  too,  one  is  compelled  to  think,  something  of  truth  in 
his  friend's  frank  statement  that  he  was  "perverse."  He 
set  up  for  a  man  of  taste  —  it  was  the  only  claim  he  put 
forward.  He  was  not  a  genius,  but  he  had  taste,  which, 
according  to  his  aphorism,  is  the  feminine  of  genius,  and, 
being  thus  in  his  own  eyes  a  critic  by  self-calling,  he  was, 
as  Tennyson  objects  in  his  poem,  "overnice."  He  was 
too  much  affected  by  the  hair's-breadth  lack  of  per- 
fection in  comparison  with  what  was  done.  This  is 
somewhat  overstated,  but  it  expresses  well  enough  the 
element  of  error.  After  all,  the  main  point  is  that  mod- 
ern poetry  did  not  appeal  to  him. 

This  case  of  Tennyson  is  dwelt  upon  because  it  is 
illustrative  of  the  unfavorable  criticism  to  be  found  here 
and  of  its  sources.  It  is  criticism  that  well  deserves 
to  be  understood  and  to  be  laid  to  heart,  for  it  will  help 
any  one  of  real  perception  to  a  simpler  and  purer  taste 
in  poetry.  The  criticism  which  is  favorable,  however, 
far  outweighs  the  fault-finding.  Fitzgerald  liked  to  write 
about  what  he  enjoyed,  and  he  enjoyed  the  best.  The 
classics  he  read  all  his  life  with  evident  zest,  and  was 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  197 

so  seized  by  ^Eschylus  and  Sophocles  that  he  could  only 
free  himself  by  translating  them.  He  fell  into  a  study 
of  Spanish  which  resulted  also  in  translation  from  Cal- 
deron,  of  course  in  his  peculiar  style  of  rendering;  and 
then  he  began  with  Persian,  out  of  which  he  gave  us  the 
"Omer"  and  other  pieces  of  interest.  This  was  a  considera- 
ble amount  of  work,  and,  in  connection  with  the  editing 
of  Crabbe  and  the  delightful  dialogue  of  "Euphranor," 
not  to  speak  of  minor  matters,  they  show  he  was  far  from 
being  an  idler  in  his  leisure.  His  readings  in  English 
were  constant,  also;  and  his  taste  was  that  which  requires 
for  itself  "the  best  books."  He  found  the  tradition  of 
the  past  as  to  the  value  of  these  great  works  in  harmony 
with  his  own  judgment;  and  at  the  end  of  his  life  he  was 
more  and  more  deeply  sworn  to  Cervantes  and  Sir  Walter 
Scott,  Shakespeare,  Boccaccio,  and  in  general  those  au- 
thors who  have  best  drawn  human  life  with  laughter 
as  well  as  tears.  It  is  interesting,  finally,  to  note  in  a 
man  so  attached  to  the  great  works  of  literature  that, 
though  the  friend  of  Thackeray,  he  was  also  delighted 
with  Dickens  and  with  other  prose-writers  of  his  own 
time;  but  in  poetry  he  admitted  only  Tennyson  and  his 
two  brothers,  Frederick  and  Charles. 

Nothing  can  be  said  of  the  interesting  episode  of  his 
exploration  of  Naseby  field  (where  he  found  a  skull  with 
a  bit  of  the  iron  heel  of  the  conqueror  in  it),  with  its 
sequel  in  Carlyle's  friendly  regard,  which  remained  un- 
broken to  the  end.  The  veering  of  his  judgment  in  re- 
spect to  Carlyle  is  also  noticeable,  for  at  first  he  had 
no  good  words  for  him.  Something,  too,  should  be  said 
of  his  less-known  friends,  and  especially  of  the  captain 
of  his  lugger,  whom  he  generously  assisted,  and  whom  he 
thought  so  much  of  as  to  get  Lawrence  to  do  his  head  - 


198  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

"with  that  complexion  which  Montaigne  calls  'vif,  male 
et  flamboyant/  blue  eyes  and  strictly  auburn  hair,  .  .  . 
head  of  the  large  type,  ...  a  Gentleman  of  Nature's 
grandest  Type,  .  .  .  made  in  the  mold  of  what  a  Hu- 
manity should  be,  Body  and  Soul,  a  poor  Fisherman. 
.  .  .  This  is  altogether  the  Greatest  Man  I  have 
known."  Such  are  some  of  the  phrases  which  he  showered 
upon  his  Viking.  There  are  traces,  too,  of  a  sympathy 
with  the  poor  in  their  work  and  their  suffering,  and 
of  a  true  sense  of  humble  life.  He  was  much  touched  by 
reality  wherever  he  came  near  it.  His  letters  are  just  and 
beautiful  in  expression  when  he  mentions  any  matter  of 
real  sorrow,  any  bereavement  or  misfortune.  His  heart 
remained  tender,  and  he  was  loyal  to  his  friends.  When 
Spedding  died,  they  had  been  separated  twenty  years,  and 
the  genuineness  of  his  feeling  of  loss  which  comes  to  the 
surface  in  two  or  three  letters,  is  a  remarkable  illustration 
of  the  vitality  of  silent  affection.  When  Tennyson  came 
to  see  him  after  an  equal  interval  of  time,  it  was  as  if 
time  had  not  been.  His  isolation  from  these  old  friends 
is  somewhat  pathetic,  but  he  was  without  reproach,  since 
the  neglect  to  write  was  on  their  part.  Tennyson  never 
would  write  letters,  and  Spedding  was  a  positive  man 
given  to  a  utilitarian  rule  of  life,  who  would  only  write 
when  there  was  some  definite  question  to  be  answered. 

Notwithstanding  this,  Fitzgerald  had  friends  who  came 
as  others  went,  as  is  the  way  of  the  world,  and  they  were 
always  scholars  and  gentlemen,  the  best  of  their  kind. 
Naturally,  however,  the  tribute  which  will  be  most  ob- 
served in  his  memory  is  that  of  the  famous  literary  men 
who  found  him  companionable  in  early  and  middle  life. 
Tennyson  wrote  of  him:  "I  had  no  truer  friend;  he  was 
one  of  the  kindliest  of  men,  and  I  have  never  known  one 


EDWARD    FITZGERALD  199 

of  so  fine  and  delicate  a  wit."  Thackeray,  being  asked 
not  long  before  he  died  which  of  his  old  friends  he  loved 
most,  told  his  daughter:  "Why,  dear  old  Fitz,  to  be  sure"; 
and  there  is  among  these  letters  one  from  Thackeray 
asking  Fitzgerald  to  attend  to  his  literary  affairs  if  he 
should  meet  with  accident  in  America,  which  would  be 
a  treasure  coming  from  any  man.  Of  the  wit  which 
Tennyson  mentions  there  is  little  in  the  correspondence, 
but  the  character  which  won  and  merited  the  regard  and 
affection  of  friends  shines  upon  every  page.  The 
modesty  with  which  he  withdrew  his  name  from  the 
public  eye  was  probably  a  congenital  trait,  and  it  affected 
his  whole  way  of  life.  He  grew  more  unwilling  even  to 
go  to  London,  finding  only  cleverness  there,  and  the 
theater  or  opera  was  less  able  to  attract  him  as  years 
went  on.  The  exhibitions,  in  which  at  one  time  he  took 
great  interest,  became  a  bore.  Reynolds,  Constable,  and 
Gainsborough  are  the  leading  topics  in  art,  and  in  music 
Handel  seems  to  have  been  most  congenial,  though  he 
writes  of  the  others  with  just  judgment.  His  life,  taken 
altogether,  was  a  gratification  of  refined  tastes  and  a 
simple  exercise  of  unpretending  virtues  among  his  friends 
and  acquaintances. 

Original  genius  he  did  not  possess,  but  his  apprecia- 
tiveness  of  excellence  was  sound  and  true;  whenever  he 
praises,  one  is  compelled  to  assent.  He  spent  the  most 
of  his  energy  in  endeavoring  to  render  foreign  classics 
into  English  in  such  a  way  as  to  make  them  effective  to 
modern  taste.  He  did  not  write  for  those  who  could  read 
the  originals.  He  professed  only  to  make  adaptations 
rather  than  translations,  and  he  cut  and  modified  with 
a  free  hand.  Scholars  have  praised  his  work  for  what 
it  strove  to  accomplish,  accepting  the  limitations  which 


200  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

his  taste  imposed  upon  it.  Taste,  however  developed 
and  refined,  is  still  not  genius,  and  it  must  be  frankly 
acknowledged  that  he  has  not  given  us  just  what  Cal- 
deron,  ^Eschylus,  and  Sophocles  created.  His  Persian 
translations  vary  even  more  widely  from  the  originals. 
"Omar  Khayyam"  is  a  celebrated  work  in  his  version, 
but  it  is  largely  his  own  work,  and  it  may  be  hoped  that 
the  other  translations  will  become  better  known,  for, 
without  having  the  commanding  qualities  of  Omar,  they 
are  studded  with  charming  stories  in  verse,  and  not 
encumbered  with  Eastern  moods  of  thought  so  much  as 
to  disturb  a  Western  mind.  The  two  poetical  speeches 
of  the  English  and  Roman  generals  with  their  fine  move- 
ment, are  also  a  kind  of  translation  —  from  prose  to 
verse,  though  nearer  to  original  composition.  The  dia- 
logue of  'Euphranor'  is  the  most  considerable  work  of 
his  own  hand,  and  reaches  what  seems  to  be  his  ideal  of 
writing  —  fine  feeling  in  fine  English.  His  name,  how- 
ever, is  linked  indissolubly  with  literature,  in  all  prob- 
ability, only  in  one  work,  the  "Omar";  his  memory  will 
always  be  associated  with  the  Tennyson  group;  besides, 
and  by  virtue  of  it,  he  will  long  be  remembered  by  those 
who  prize  simplicity,  refinement,  and  moral  worth  above 
the  more  vulgar  quality  of  distinction. 


HAWTHORNE 


THIS  story  of  Hawthorne's  home-life,  his  relations  to 
mother,  sister,  wife,  and  child,  varies  and  deepens  our 
impression  of  his  personality,  while  it  does  nothing  to 
disturb  the  tradition  of  his  solitary  genius.  That  he 
was  born  among  peculiar  people,  and  bred  under  an 
eminently  unsocial  domestic  regime,  is  well  known;  but 
in  this  his  circumstances  were  not  so  exceptional  as  might 
be  thought.  Madam  Hawthorne,  self-immured  in  her 
mysterious  chamber,  like  the  Aunt  Mary  whom  Emerson 
describes  in  one  of  his  posthumous  papers,  was  not  merely 
idiosyncratic:  she  was  a  legacy  from  the  New  England 
past,  and  in  her  own  day  and  generation  was  not  out  of 
place;  and  her  son,  at  a  time  when  children  were  believed 
to  be  as  happy  as  was  proper  without  aid  from  their 
elders,  and  no  thought  was  had  of  making  companions 
of  growing  lads,  was  left  to  himself  and  his  playmates 
much  as  other  boys  were.  The  family,  it  is  true,  seem 
to  have  reached  the  highest  point  of  uncommunicative- 
ness  consistent  with  dwelling  under  the  same  roof;  and, 
especially  after  Hawthorne's  return  from  college,  where 
he  had  proved  a  companionable  fellow  enough  in  his 
own  set,  this  hermit-life  within  doors  must  have  been 
powerful  to  confirm  the  hereditary  taint  of  solitariness 
in  him,  derived  from  his  Puritan  and  sea-going  ances- 
tors. Thrown  back  on  the  resources  of  his  own  spirit, 
he  let  solitude  have  its  way  with  him,  and  thus  he  be- 


202  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

came  well  acquainted  with  the  gray  rocks  of  the  Marble- 
head  promontory  and  the  lovely  reaches  of  the  wooded 
Beverly  shore,  and,  by  the  help  of  their  silence,  he  made 
imagination  the  habit  of  his  mind. 

Meanwhile,  in  another  New  England  household,  also 
with  a  touch  of  peculiarity,  was  growing  the  woman  who 
was  to  take  Hawthorne  out  of  this  homelessness  and 
found  a  family  hearth  of  a  very  different  character  from 
that  he  had  known.  This  woman  was  Sophia  Peabody, 
a  sister  of  Elizabeth  P.  Peabody;  and  the  touch  of 
peculiarity  that  has  been  alluded  to  showed  itself  mainly 
in  connection  with  transcendentalism  —  a  species  of  in- 
tellectual measles  which  was  then  very  contagious  among 
the  feminine  minds  of  the  neighborhood.  Sophia's 
mother  was  a  woman  of  great  good  sense,  and  her  father 
a  kindly  and  helpful  man,  both  of  them  excellent  parents 
of  the  softer  New  England  type.  She  herself  was  an 
invalid,  subject  to  an  "acute  nervous  headache  which 
lasted  uninterruptedly  from  her  twelfth  to  her  thirty- 
first  year."  She  was  an  amateur  in  painting,  more- 
over, and  she  wrote  a  journal,  and  she  read  books:  "I 
read  Degerando,  Fenelon,  St.  Luke  and  Isaiah,  Young, 
the  'Spectator/  and  Shakespeare's  'Comedy  of  Errors,7 
Taming  of  the  Shrew,'  'All's  Well  that  Ends  Well,'  and 
'Love's  Labor's  Lost,'  besides  doing  some  sewing  to-day." 
This,  in  the  case  of  a  girl  of  nineteen,  who  is  said  never 
to  have  been  without  pain  for  an  hour,  was  a  good  stint. 
She  was  not  without  enjoyment,  too,  in  an  epistolary 
way:  "I  have  written  a  long  letter  to  Miss  Loring  this 
evening,"  she  says  at  the  same  time,  "with  the  moon  all 
the  while  in  my  face.  This  is  revelry!"  As  an  example 
of  "the  growth  and  advancement  of  her  mind"  during  the 
next  eight  years,  her  son  prints  further  extracts  from  her 


HAWTHORNE  203 


/ 


confidential  papers,  of  which  these  two,  written  when 
Hawthorne  was  falling  in  love  with  her,  will  suffice: 

"Last  night  I  was  left  in  darkness  —  soft,  grateful  dark- 
ness —  and  my  meditations  turned  upon  my  habit  of  viewing 
things  through  the  'couleur  de  rose'  medium,  and  I  was  ques- 
tioning what  the  idea  of  it  was  —  for  since  it  was  real  there 
must  be  some  good  explanation  of  it  —  when  suddenly,  like 
a  night-blooming  cereus,  my  mind  opened,  and  I  read  in 
letters  of  paly  golden-green  words  to  this  effect:  The  beautiful 
and  good  and  true  are  the  only  real  and  abiding  things  —  the 
only  proper  use  of  the  soul  and  nature.  Evil  and  ugliness  and 
falsehood  are  abuses,  monstrous  and  transient." 

"I  have  read  Carlyle's  'Miscellanies'  with  deep  delight.  The 
complete  manner  in  which  he  presents  a  man  is  wonderful. 
He  is  the  most  impartial  of  critics,  I  think,  except  Mr.  Emer- 
son. Every  subject  interesting  to  the  soul  is  touched  in  these 
essays.  Such  a  reach  of  thought  produced  no  slight  stir  within 
me.  I  am  rejoiced  that  Carlyle  is  coming  to  America.  But 
I  cannot  help  feeling  that  Emerson  is  diviner  than  he:  Mr. 
Emerson  is  Pure  Tone." 

While  Sophia  was  engaged  in  such  meditations,  and 
the  romancer,  having  discovered  his  occupation,  was  at 
hard  labor  handling  coal  and  salt  in  the  Boston  Custom- 
house, their  fate  found  them  out  and  they  confessed 
they  had  loved  at  first  sight.  It  was  impossible,  how- 
ever, that  such  an  invalid  as  Sophia  should  be  married, 
and  it  was  agreed  that  their  union  must  wait  the  cessa- 
tion of  the  headache  that  had  lasted  without  intermit- 
tance  nearly  a  score  of  years.  Love  was  good  to  his 
new  devotees,  it  scarcely  need  be  said ;  the  cure  was  soon 
affected,  and  with  the  headache,  apparently,  disappeared 
also  that  peculiar  Bostonian  malady  already  mentioned. 
There  is  nothing  more  about  "paly  golden-green  letters," 
or  Mr.  Emerson  in  his  incarnation  as  "Pure  Tone." 


204  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

Sophia  became  a  faithful  wife  and  a  kind  mother,  the 
center  of  a  very  charming  home. 

It  is  the  history  of  this  home  that  Julian  Hawthorne 
has  written.  By  the  help  of  his  father's  very  copious 
notes  of  the  sayings  and  doings  and  looks  of  the  children 
—  Una,  Julian,  and  Rose  —  and  with  his  own  recollec- 
tions of  boyhood  to  draw  upon  besides  for  the  later 
period,  he  has  taken  us  into  the  intimacy  of  the  house- 
hold, and  confided  the  charm  and  dignity  and  wisdom 
of  Hawthorne's  fatherhood.  And  this  he  has  done  in 
a  narrative  so  instinct  with  tender  respect  and  unques- 
tioning love,  so  full  of  a  frank,  boyish  spirit,  of  the  loy- 
alty that  has  never  contemplated  the  King's  doing  wrong, 
that  the  critic  is  constrained  to  take  his  point  of  view  and 
accept  this  biography,  not  as  a  critical  and  complete 
life,  but  as  a  friendly  confidence.  It  is,  indeed,  so  far 
as  the  children  are  concerned,  a  lovely  story,  whether  the 
thin  tent  of  the  family  was  pitched  by  the  Concord 
River,  or  the  Salem  wharves,  or  among  the  Berkshire 
hills,  or  whatever  the  place  of  their  sojourning  —  Liver- 
pool, or  Rome,  or  the  Redcar  Sands,  or  the  Wayside,  in 
which  the  last  days  were  spent.  Some  passages,  of  Haw- 
thorne's own  writing,  are  masterly.  There  could  be 
nothing  more  perfect,  as  mere  literary  description,  than 
the  minute  narration  of  the  play  of  Una  and  Julian  while 
Madam  Hawthorne  lay  dying;  nothing  more  pathetic 
than  the  scene  where  Hawthorne  himself  kneels  by  his 
mother's  dark  bedside  and  takes  her  hand,  and  feels  that 
last  dead  strain  of  the  cords  of  birth  across  all  the  strange- 
ness of  their  divided  lives,  while  the  childish  laugh  and 
prattle  float  up  from  the  sunny  yard  below.  And  Julian, 
in  contributing  to  the  account  of  his  own  boyhood,  has 
not  injured  its  simplicity  and  health  by  the  intrusion  of 


HAWTHORNE  205 

any  after  self-consciousness.  From  the  moment  that  he 
comes  under  cognizance  as  a  lump  of  flesh  to  the  last 
fine  scene,  when  he  runs  over  from  Harvard  to  ask  a 
favor  and  goes  out  with  "light  upon  him  from  his  father's 
eyes/'  not  knowing  it  was  the  last  glimpse,  he  is  merely 
Hawthorne's  boy  who  once  wished  that  his  father  didn't 
write  books.  But,  naturally,  all  this  is  contained  in  an 
account  of  small  matters,  little  events,  walks  and  swims, 
and  books  by  the  fireside  and  fairy  stories  on  the  sands, 
and  not  unfrequently  the  touch  of  nature  is  to  be  found 
in  a  mass  of  irrelevant  trivialities. 

Yet  this  happy  home  of  Hawthorne's  maturity  was 
not  more  exceptional,  for  the  time  and  social  state  in 
which  he  found  himself,  than  had  been  the  case  with 
the  lonely  isolation  of  his  boyhood,  with  which  it  stands 
in  such  effective  contrast.  In  each,  although  its  pecu- 
liar quality  of  reserve  or  freedom  was  accented,  there 
was  only  a  divergence  in  degree  from  a  New  England 
type.  Madam  Hawthorne,  and  all  that  her  name  stands 
for  in  Hawthorne's  life,  belong  to  Puritanism;  his  own 
home  was  in  the  highest  sense  humane;  and  in  view  of 
this  contrast  it  is  easy  to  see  why  Julian,  with  his  fresh 
and  exclusive  remembrance  of  the  sunshiny  interior  of 
Hawthorne's  latter  years,  should  protest  very  loudly 
against  the  not  uncommon  opinion  that  his  father  was 
the  victim  of  a  certain  morbidity.  On  the  contrary,  he 
says,  never  was  there  such  health,  sanity,  vigor  —  all 
manly  traits  and  qualities,  capacities  and  energies.  Cer- 
tainly, by  comparison  with  the  life  out  of  which 
Hawthorne  came,  and  perhaps  even  more  clearly  by 
comparison  with  the  Transcendentalists,  the  Brook-Farm 
reformers,  the  prophets  and  prophetesses  among  whom  he 
was  thrown,  moral  health  and  mental  sanity  and  the 


206  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

vigor  of  an  incorruptible  common-sense  seem  to  be  pe- 
culiarly his  possession  —  one  is  almost  tempted  to  say, 
his  alone.  When  a  man  of  his  spiritual  insight  and  sens- 
ibility, so  open  to  fine  suggestions,  so  tenacious  of  im- 
palpable meanings,  could  say  of  a  friend  like  Emerson: 
"Mr.  Emerson  is  a  great  searcher  for  facts,  but  they  seem 
to  melt  away  and  become  unsubstantial  in  his  grasp," 
the  criticism  goes  far  to  reveal  his  own  balance,  the  con- 
tinence and  repose  of  his  own  mind.  He  saw  clearer  and 
deeper  than  the  theorizers  into  the  transcendent  mystery 
there  is  in  the  souFs  life,  not  only  because  he  had  more 
delicate  impressions  and  simpler  perceptions,  but  also 
because  his  relation  therewith  was  vital  and  not  merely 
intellectual,  and,  instead  of  being  a  subject  of  spasmodic 
reflections,  shared  in  the  inflexible  reality  of  direct  moral 
experience.  He  was  not  one  of  the  Concord  men,  and 
that  fact  by  itself  helps  a  good  deal  his  son's  claim  that 
he  was  not  fairly  open  to  any  charge  of  crankiness.  Yet 
that  there  was  some  morbidity  in  his  blood,  a  tendency 
to  certain  subjects  of  investigation,  a  bent  toward  certain 
moods  of  sentiment,  a  preoccupation  of  his  mind  with 
death,  evil,  sin,  and  the  fantasies  of  an  overwrought 
spiritual  sensibility,  can  hardly  be  seriously  questioned. 

In  the  same  way,  Julian  does  not  make  out  that  his 
father  was  essentially  a  social  man.  Even  inside  the 
family  circle,  companionable  as  he  was  with  his  children, 
it  is  to  be  remembered  that  they  had  scarcely  reached 
the  period  of  full,  separate  consciousness  in  their  lives 
when  he  died.  In  his  social  relations  with  his  friends 
he  was,  it  is  true,  acceptable,  but  it  is  here  that  the 
biography  is  weakest;  what  is  given  is  very  meager  and 
commonplace,  and  there  is  an  utter  failure  to  show  any 
raison  d'etre  in  these  friendships  —  from  what  attrac- 


HAWTHORNE  207 

tion  they  took  their  origin,  or  in  what  strength  was  their 
bond,  or  in  what  charm  they  had  their  sweetness.  In 
his  shyness  with  strangers  there  was  something  of  pure 
rusticity:  one  notices  that  he  is  always  thinking  what 
he  should  say  or  what  he  might  have  replied,  or  by  some 
other  remark  shows  that  he  is  always  conscious  of  an 
effort  in  assuming  the  social  relation  with  a  stranger  of 
his  own  rank.  Toward  some  who  are  associated  with 
his  circle,  it  is  plain  he  was  far  from  being  on  open 
terms.  Ellery  Channing,  for  example,  to  judge  by  the 
letter  of  that  poet's  inditing,  could  not  have  been  very 
near  to  him,  and  Margaret  Fuller  must  have  been 
grievously  deceived  by  his  silence.  One  would  have 
thought  that  the  denunciation  launched  at  Froude  for 
publishing  Carlyle's  "Reminiscences"  with  as  little  regard 
to  reputations  as  Carlyle  himself  had,  might  have  de- 
terred others  from  doing  likewise;  but  now  it  seems 
duobtful  whether  it  may  not  be  acknowledged  as  a  lite- 
rary canon  that  the  laws  of  good  breeding  do  not  extend 
beyond  the  grave,  or,  to  put  it  in  a  still  more  compre- 
hensive form,  that  no  courtesy  is  to  be  expected  of  a 
dead  man.  In  this  biography  there  are  two  character- 
izations of  the  kind  that  are  usually  sealed  up  until  the 
year  1950.  That  of  Tupper  —  the  most  comical  and 
diverting  thing  in  the  world  —  that  of  Margaret  Fuller 
(what  is  said  of  Count  d'Ossoli  is  shamefully  wrong), 
show  how  Hawthorne's  humor,  secreted  in  his  own  breast, 
helped  to  keep  him  free  from  the  literary  coteries,  the 
shams  and  intellectual  afflictions  of  his  community: 

"It  was  such  an  awful  joke,  that  she  should  have  resolved  — 
in  all  sincerity,  no  doubt  —  to  make  herself  the  greatest, 
wisest,  best  woman  of  the  age.  And  to  that  end  she  set  to 
work  on  her  strong,  heavy,  unpliable,  and,  in  many  respects, 


208  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

defective  and  evil  nature,  and  adorned  it  with  a  mosaic  of 
admirable  qualities,  such  as  she  chose  to  possess;  putting  in 
here  a  splendid  talent  and  there  a  moral  excellence,  and  polish- 
ing each  separate  piece,  and  the  whole  together,  till  it  seemed 
to  shine  afar  and  dazzling  all  who  saw  it.  She  took  credit  to 
herself  for  having  been  her  own  Redeemer,  if  not  her  own 
Creator;  and,  indeed,  she  was  far  more  a  work  of  art  than 
any  of  Mozier's  statues.  But  she  was  not  working  in  an 
inanimate  substance,  like  marble  or  clay;  there  was  some- 
thing within  her  that  she  could  not  possibly  come  at,  to  re- 
create or  refine  it;  and,  by  and  by,  this  rude  old  potency 
bestirred  itself,  and  undid  all  her  labor  in  the  twinkling  of  an 
eye.  On  the  whole,  I  do  not  know  but  I  like  her  the  better 
for  it,  because  she  proved  herself  a  very  woman  after  all, 
and  fell  as  the  weakest  of  her  sisters  might." 

No,  not  with  Margaret  Fuller,  nor  Ellery  Channing, 
nor  even  with  Emerson  and  the  geniuses  he  was  forever 
picking  up  in  the  highway  or  the  potato-field,  any  more 
than  with  the  politicians  of  the  Custom-house,  could 
Hawthorne  enter  into  absolutely  free  social  relations. 
One  suspects  that  his  college  and  his  English  friends  were 
more  accessible  to  him,  because  they  were  wholly  un- 
related to  that  part  of  his  nature  which  fed  the  flame  of 
his  genius.  That  genius  was  solitary;  and  throughout 
the  long  narrative  of  his  cheerful  and  intimate  life  with 
the  children,  one  sees  that  he  kept  his  privacy  always, 
and  the  witness  of  it  is  that  path  beneath  the  pines  on 
the  brow  of  the  hill,  worn  by  his  feet  in  his  daily  evening 
walk  by  himself  as  he  watched  the  sunset  flush  and  fade 
in  the  west. 

This  biography  is  like  Mr.  James's  "Hawthorne"  in 
that  it  fails  to  give  any  history  of  that  immortal  part  of 
the  man  in  which  the  world  takes  interest.  Julian's 
point  of  view  is  completely  shown  when  he  says  of  Haw- 


HAWTHORNE  209 

thorne,  "If  he  had  never  written  a  line,  he  would  still  have 
possessed,  as  a  human  being,  scarcely  less  interest  and 
importance  than  he  does  now";  and  adds  that  his  father's 
books  struck  him,  when  he  came  to  read  them,  "as  being 
but  a  somewhat  imperfect  reflection  of  certain  regions 
of  his  father's  mind  with  which  he  had  become  other- 
wise familiar."  One  is  pleased,  for  the  boy's  sake,  that 
to  him  the  genius  was  lost  in  the  father,  but  to  the  world 
it  is  just  the  contrary;  and  to  many  it  may  prove  a 
disappointment  to  find  only  a  delightful  father  (not 
wholly  unique,  be  it  added),  where  they  had  hoped  for 
some  inner  glimpses  of  a  fine  genius.  Hawthorne,  the 
romancer,  was  as  remote  from  his  domestic  life  as  from 
the  provincial  civilization  on  which  Mr.  James  dwelt. 
Indeed,  the  latter's  account  of  Hawthorne,  not  to  speak 
it  profanely,  seemed  as  if  he  had  made  a  very  careful 
realistic  study  —  a  "portrait,"  he  would  probably  have 
called  it  —  of  a  certain  little  Judean  town  we  all  know 
of,  and  exclaimed,  "Lo!  how  parochial  Nazareth  was!" 
Mr.  James  might  find  much  in  these  volumes  to  support 
his  thesis;  he  might  smile  to  read,  for  example,  that  Haw- 
thorne owned  no  picture  until  he  was  in  middle  life,  and 
then,  when  Sophia  painted  him  one  or  two,  which  he 
thought  very  beautiful,  he  wrote  that  perhaps  they  had 
better  be  put  into  mahogany  frames  to  match  the  furni- 
ture, probably  (one  half  overhears  Mr.  Howells  adding) 
of  the  black  hair-cloth  variety.  But  Hawthorne's  genius 
was  a  thing  apart  from  all  that,  just  as  it  was  apart 
from  his  children's  lives.  It  was  of  the  imagination, 
pure  and  simple,  and  had  no  root  in  culture  whether 
meager  or  rich;  and  except  as  his  genius  expressed  itself 
through  art,  it  seems  to  have  been  as  reticent  as 
Shakespeare's. 


2io  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 


II 

It  may  be  true,  as  Mr.  Conway  remarks,  that  "there 
are  few  authors  with  whom  the  world  is  more  intimate 
than  the  one  supposed  to  have  most  shunned  its  inti- 
macy." The  confessions  of  the  Note-books,  the  reve- 
lations made  by  his  son  and  his  son-in-law,  and  the  not 
inconsiderable  mass  of  reminiscences  in  other  volumes, 
may  lead  one  to  this  broad  statement;  but  on  finishing 
Mr.  Conway's  account  one  still  finds  Hawthorne's  ac- 
tual life  remote,  and  is  not  a  whit  nearer  to  any  knowl- 
edge of  that  genius  which,  even  in  his  solitary  life,  seemed 
to  make  a  new  solitude  of  its  own. 

The  story  is  in  itself  most  depressing,  mainly  because 
of  the  circumstances  which  it  records.  Hawthorne  ap- 
pears to  have  been  sensible  that  his  infelicity  had  its 
beginnings  in  the  period  of  his  seclusion  at  Salem.  It 
does  not  seem  that  in  boyhood  or  youth  he  was  unsociable 
or  eccentric;  the  absence  of  companions,  however,  after 
he  left  college,  the  increasing  habit  of  a  naturally  brood- 
ing genius,  the  sense  that  he  was  making  no  impression 
on  the  world  as  year  by  year  passed  by,  must  have  de- 
veloped in  him  (perhaps  without  his  taking  notice  of 
it  at  once)  the  reticence  and  withdrawal  into  self  which 
were  traits  of  his  Puritan  and  sea-faring  blood.  Dr. 
Loring's  account  of  the  neglect  of  him  by  Salem  people 
(for  the  city  was  a  place  of  some  intellectual  culture) 
is  very  much  to  the  point.  He  was  not  known  as  an 
author,  and  he  was  not  of  the  sort  that  makes  friends. 
There  was  nothing  extraordinary  in  his  being  "let  alone." 
The  same  thing  would  happen  to-day  in  any  community. 
Hawthorne's  isolation  proceeded  from  himself.  Nor 


HAWTHORNE  211 

does  it  appear  that  his  "shyness"  was  merely  the  attri- 
bute of  peculiar  genius.  Self-consciousness  and  pride, 
as  well  as  temperament,  went  to  its  making.  How  much 
he  prized  success  as  a  proof  of  manliness  is  clear  from 
that  letter  to  Hillard  in  which  he  accepts  his  friend's 
assistance,  but  calls  it  "bitter,"  and  adds  that  "ill-success 
in  life  is  really  and  justly  a  matter  of  shame."  The  sense 
of  failure,  as  something  by  no  means  remotely  possible 
in  his  case,  was  as  present  to  him  as  his  shadow  for  years. 
His  withdrawal  from  literary  men  in  particular  is  notice- 
able. On  the  other  hand,  the  ease  with  which  he  met 
men  of  a  rougher  mold,  the  ordinary  people  of  the  com- 
mon sort,  and  the  pleasure  he  plainly  took  in  the  contact 
with  them,  are  not  less  significant.  He  had  no  need  to 
remember  that  he  was  "the  obscurest  literary  man  in 
America"  in  the  presence  of  men  to  whom  all  literary 
men  were  perhaps  equally  obscure.  He  felt,  doubtless, 
also  in  their  company  that  relief  from  the  "bodiless  crea- 
tion" which  occupied  his  mind  when  by  himself;  but  the 
point  of  interest  is,  that  there  was  no  "shyness"  in  his 
intercourse  with  these  companions.  The  lack  of  recog- 
nition of  his  genius,  and  a  manly  spirit  offended  by  its 
lack  of  seeming  efficiency,  certainly  aggravated  unfortu- 
nate tendencies  in  his  disposition. 

The  extent  to  which  society  is  responsible  for  its  sins 
of  omission  in  the  way  of  not  at  once  knowing  and  en- 
couraging its  men  of  literary  genius,  is  a  question  too 
often  discussed  only  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  poor 
author.  There  was  a  tendency  to  ascribe  the  difficulties 
of  our  literary  men  in  the  past,  to  the  lack  of  an 
international  copyright.  Mr.  Conway  gives  unlimited 
influence  to  this  fact  in  discussing  the  trials  of  Haw- 
thorne. It  may  fairly  be  questioned,  whether  the  un- 


212  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

known  writer  of  short  stories  under  various  signatures, 
in  various  periodicals,  would  have  greatly  benefited  in 
his  early  days  by  the  best  of  copyright  regulations 
between  England  and  America.  As  it  was,  he  had 
the  kindest  assistance  in  getting  before  the  world,  so 
far  as  friends  could  give  any.  Horatio  Bridge  pri- 
vately assumed  the  financial  responsibility  for  his  col- 
lected volume  of  tales,  and,  so  far  as  criticism  could 
be  helpful,  he  had  Longfellow  and  Hillard  to  plead  his 
cause  with  all  the  warmth  of  friendship,  in  addition  to 
the  weight  of  their  criticism.  At  a  later  time  Fields  was 
the  most  stimulating  and  generous  of  publishers.  Apart 
from  literature,  also,  Hawthorne's  friends  endeavored 
repeatedly  to  obtain  office  for  him,  and  succeeded  in  giv- 
ing him  custom-house  appointments  in  Boston  and 
Salem;  and  when  the  latter  was  cancelled,  they  gave  him 
money  in  the  most  unassuming  and  considerate  way. 
Finally  he  received  the  Liverpool  Consulate  from  his 
friend  President  Pierce. 

It  is  true  that  there  is  much  meanness  of  a  political 
color  in  his  holding  of  these  offices,  which  were  in  them- 
selves little  fitted  for  him,  and  also  that  they  killed  litera- 
ture in  him  while  he  held  them.  Mr.  Conway  thinks 
there  was  something  ignoble  in  the  price  paid  for  the 
Consulate,  namely,  the  campaign  biography  of  Pierce, 
and  Hawthorne  clearly  thought  it  an  unwelcome  task; 
but  there  is  no  inherent  impropriety  in  a  man  of  letters 
writing  a  fitting  life  of  his  friend  who  happens  to  be  a  can- 
didate for  the  Presidency.  It  may  be  presumed  that  if  he 
regards  him  sufficiently  to  own  him  as  a  friend,  he  can 
find  enough  to  praise  without  compromising  his  own 
integrity;  and  if  at  the  same  time  he  serves  a  political 
cause  in  which  he  believes,  so  much  the  more  reason  for 


HAWTHORNE  213 

his  doing  his  part  as  friend  and  citizen.  It  is  unpleasing 
to  know  that  Hawthorne's  opinions  upon  slavery  were 
wrong,  but  not  to  know  that  he  expressed  them;  and 
we  cannot  help  thinking  that  it  is  the  character  of  Pierce, 
and  not  the  act  of  Hawthorne,  which  makes  this  incident 
so  unpalatable  to  Mr.  Conway.  Had  the  story  been 
the  life  of  Lincoln,  feelings  with  regard  to  it  would 
probably  be  of  a  different  sort.  Hawthorne  was  reluc- 
tant to  write  the  book,  and  he  was  quite  as  reluctant, 
no  doubt,  to  apply  for  office,  or  for  retention  in  office, 
by  the  customary  channels.  His  political  servitude  for 
bread  must  have  always  been  repugnant;  but  Govern- 
ment did  the  best  it  could  for  him  under  the  spoils  sys- 
tem, his  friends  were  active  and  interested  always,  and 
his  publishers  and  editors  seem  to  have  paid  him  all  just 
dues.  To  complain  that  the  nation  did  not  provide 
proper  place  or  pension  for  Hawthorne,  when  it  provides 
them  for  no  literary  man,  or  that  society  did  not  buy 
his  books  in  sufficient  quantities  to  support  him  before 
he  became  famous,  seems  beside  the  point.  Literature 
is  not  with  us  a  matter  of  national  concern  or  of  social 
patronage;  it  stands  on  its  own  bottom,  and,  under 
American  ideas,  is  likely  to  do  so. 

The  fact  is,  that  the  notion  that  the  country  suffers 
some  disgrace  in  consequence  of  the  domestic  hardships 
and  modest  purse  of  Hawthorne  and  others  in  the  pur- 
suit of  literature,  is  a  relic  of  the  paternal  tradition  of 
aristocratic  society,  which  made  men  of  letters  a  favored 
class,  and  gave  them  charity  much  in  the  same  spirit 
as  those  who  would  exempt  soldiers  from  the  civil-service 
examinations.  Hawthorne  received  the  same  treatment 
as  every  other  citizen.  Mr.  Conway's  assumption,  there- 
fore, that  the  country  was  in  some  way  responsible  for 


214  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

Hawthorne's  troubles,  and  should  have  "protected"  him 
from  them,  seems  a  fundamental  error.  He  suffered 
the  not  unusual  consequences  of  choosing  a  precarious 
and  ill-paid  career,  the  fruits  of  which  are  reaped  rather 
by  posterity  than  by  the  author,  but  this  latter  fact  is 
one  of  the  greatest  inducements  to  it,  under  the  form  of 
fame  or  of  social  service.  Hawthorne  suffered  poverty, 
but  not  injustice;  he  achieved  a  unique  success,  and 
honor  with  it,  at  the  end,  and  he  receives  from  his  country 
all  that  he  is  entitled  to  —  immortal  memory. 


LONGFELLOW 

THE  official  biography  of  Longfellow  is  characterized 
by  its  good  manners.  There  is  no  line  in  it,  any  more 
than  in  his  poems,  which  the  poet  dying  would  wish  to 
blot,  and  this  is  double  good  fortune.  Those  who  were 
his  acquaintances  need  not  fear  any  disillusion  as  to 
their  place  in  his  real  esteem,  and  those  who  worshiped 
him  from  afar  will  find  no  appreciable  lessening  of  the 
proper  heroic  distance  between  themselves  and  the  object 
of  their  devotion.  At  the  end,  it  is  as  if  one  had  grown 
familiar  with  the  study  at  Craigie  House,  had  heard  the 
poet  talk  of  his  past  and  his  books  with  a  discreet  sup- 
pression of  names  not  already  public  by  virtue  of  their 
owner's  repute,  and  had  listened  to  extracts  from  the 
journals  and  correspondence,  while  all  the  time  the  doors 
leading  out  of  the  library  are  kept  closed.  The  editor 
-  and  he  is  indeed  only  an  editor  —  adopted  that  modern 
substitute  for  autobiography  which  consists  in  a  selection 
and  arrangement  of  papers  written  by  the  man  himself 
and  connected  by  the  slightest  thread  of  narrative.  He 
says  in  his  preface  that  this  method  is  one  by  which 
"the  reader  would  best  learn  how  a  man  of  letters  spends 
his  time  and  what  occupies  his  thoughts."  This  plan 
was  rigidly  adhered  to,  and  consequently  the  work  is 
essentially  Longfellow's  diary,  expanded  and  illustrated 
in  parts  by  letters,  and  exhibits  to  the  public  the  sur- 
face of  events  and  thoughts  in  the  life  of  a  poet,  in  the 
literary  and  social  environment  of  Boston,  who  was  one 


2i6  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

of  the  most  cultivated  members  of  the  group  that  gave 
distinction  to  the  period. 

The  editor  himself  describes  this  life  as  that  of  a  man 
of  letters;  and  whether  or  not  he  meant  to  distinguish 
sharply  between  the  phases  of  Longfellow's  career  as  poet 
and  as  scholar,  the  effect  of  the  mode  of  biography  chosen 
is  to  present  its  subject  as  a  scholar  who  wrote  poetry 
rather  than  as  a  poet  primarily  and  always.  In  nearly 
all  accounts  of  men  in  whose  lives  the  world  takes  inter- 
est there  are  some  salient  points,  some  deeds  or  works  or 
incidents  which  have  attracted  attention  to  the  individ- 
ual; but  in  telling  the  story  in  detail  the  biographer  often 
finds  difficulty  in  managing  those  intervals  in  which  his 
hero's  days  did  not  differ  from  those  of  ordinary  mortals. 
It  is  in  such  portions  that  the  much  lamented  "disillu- 
sion" usually  makes  itself  known.  In  Longfellow's  case 
the  writing  of  a  series  of  poems  has  drawn  the  curiosity 
of  men  toward  his  personality,  and  if  one  would  get  at 
the  true  record  of  his  poetic  life,  that  would  be  the 
biography  for  which  men  would  care  most;  but  that  is 
a  very  secret  matter,  and  hard  both  to  discover  and  to 
disclose.  Moods  visited  him  and  he  wrote;  but  between 
these,  and  filling  up  the  intervals  of  his  poetic  life,  was 
a  life  of  letters,  and  it  is  this  life  of  which  his  diary  was 
a  transcript.  This  was  easy  both  to  record  and  to  pub- 
lish. Longfellow  himself  tells  us  what  he  thought  of 
its  relative  importance  in  his  real  history:  "How  brief 
this  chronicle  is,  even  of  my  outward  life.  And  of  my 
inner  life,  not  a  word.  If  one  were  only  sure  that  one's 
journal  would  never  be  seen  by  any  one,  and  never  get 
into  print,  how  different  the  case  would  be!  But  death 
picks  the  locks  of  all  portfolios  and  throws  the  contents 
into  the  street  for  the  public  to  scramble  after."  Waiv- 


LONGFELLOW  217 

ing  all  question  as  to  the  degree  of  privacy  to  which  a 
poet's  life  is  entitled,  let  us  take  it  at  once  on  this  best 
authority  that  the  diary  which  is  spread  before  us  is 
not  the  true  record  of  a  poet's  soul,  but  the  jottings  of 
what  happened  to  him  in  the  body,  the  cities  he  saw,  the 
men  and  women  he  met,  the  scenes  of  natural  beauty  and 
childish  festival  he  witnessed,  the  society  he  dined  and 
talked  with,  the  books  he  read  or  wrote,  and  such  of  his 
thoughts,  sentiments,  and  moods  as  he  was  not  unwilling 
that  the  public  should  "scramble  after."  The  letters, 
both  of  his  own  inditing  and  from  others,  which  supple- 
ment the  diary,  will  not  affect  the  matter,  since  they 
belong  to  the  same  outer  region  of  life. 

It  has  generally  been  believed  that  Longfellow's  life 
was,  in  its  human  relations  and  its  social  material  sur- 
roundings, very  charming;  in  these  volumes  this  opinion 
is  sustained  by  page  after  page  of  detail.  Whether  as 
host  or  guest,  as  son,  father,  or  citizen,  as  stranger  or 
as  bosom  friend,  the  element  of  urbanity  pervaded  his 
character.  One  finds  it  only  too  easy  to  quote  instances 
in  which  his  refined  amiableness  gave  beauty  to  trivial 
or  even  mean  and  intrinsically  ugly  incidents.  This 
social  phase  of  the  biography  presents  our  cultivation  in 
the  intercourse  of  life  with  the  greatest  perfectness  which 
it  has  yet  found  in  any  literary  record ;  the  diary,  in  this 
regard,  becomes  at  once  an  indispensable  part  of  the 
memoirs  of  manners.  So  much  is  true  of  it  in  relation  to 
the  entire  coterie  (and  it  was  not  a  very  small  band)  of 
which  Longfellow  was  one  of  the  members;  but  beyond 
this,  some  of  the  individuals  whom  he  habitually  men- 
tions gain  in  agreeableness  by  what  he  has  to  say  of  them. 
To  take  the  most  notable  instance,  it  is  certainly  impos- 
sible to  lay  down  the  volumes  without  a  much  pleasanter 


2i8  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

impression  of  Charles  Sumner's  nature  than  the  public 
has  thus  far  entertained.  Longfellow  was  not  blind  to 
the  grandiose  quality  in  his  friend,  but  he  writes  of  him 
so  warmly,  and  displays  his  attachment  in  so  many  ways, 
and  insists  so  often  upon  the  affectionate,  humane,  and 
simple  heart  of  his  Herculean  orator,  that  the  statuesque 
memory  of  the  Senator  loses  something  of  the  chill  which 
has  belonged  to  it;  and  the  glimpses  one  gets  of  Sumner 
during  his  frequent  visits  to  Craigie  House  display  him 
in  an  attractive  guise.  On  the  other  hand,  Sumner's 
friendship  seems  to  have  reacted  on  Longfellow,  to  de- 
velop in  him  an  interest  in  politics  and  to  quicken  his 
patriotism  and  enlarge  his  life  with  public  sympathies. 
The  vigor  and  decision  of  Longfellow's  remarks  upon  the 
state  of  the  country,  the  clear  and  certain  tone  whenever 
that  conflict  of  "the  North  wind  against  the  Southern 
pestilence"  is  spoken  of,  free  him  from  the  doubt  which 
has  been  sometimes  indulged,  that  he  secluded  himself 
from  the  great  cause  of  his  day  more  than  befitted  a  com- 
plete man.  There  is  evidence  enough  in  these  pages  to 
show  how  intense  and  constant  was  his  aversion  to  the 
violence  of  politics,  but  in  spite  of  that  he  entered  into 
the  spirit  of  the  time,  and  from  an  early  period  had  his 
heart  in  the  right  place.  That  this  was  in  some  degree 
due  to  his  intimacy  with  Sumner  also  seems  plain;  and 
thus  the  withdrawal  of  the  veil  of  privacy  from  their 
friendship  is  a  gain  to  the  memory  of  both. 

The  social  feature  in  Longfellow's  life  is,  perhaps, 
the  leading  trait  of  this  work  and  its  most  immortal  part; 
its  charm  is  to  be  felt,  as  the  editor  justly  says,  only  by 
the  perusal  of  a  mutitude  of  details  as  they  follow  day 
by  day  in  the  record  of  the  poet's  own  hand.  Scarcely 
second  to  this,  however,  is  his  friendship  and  association 


LONGFELLOW  219 

with  books.  From  early  years  his  genius  was  fed  from 
this  source;  and  the  fortunate  accident  of  time,  which 
made  his  graduation  at  Bowdoin  College  coincident  with 
a  desire  on  the  part  of  the  trustees  to  found  a  chair  of 
modern  languages,  determined  his  fate  as  a  poet  who 
should  lean  much  on  books.  The  travels  and  studies 
which  were  undertaken  to  fit  himself  for  the  prospective 
professorship  may  be  said  to  have  controlled  his  career. 
He  returned  with  an  admirable  literary  culture,  which 
his  later  post  at  Harvard  helped  to  perfect.  His  read- 
ing from  that  time  was  in  Continental  rather  than  Eng- 
lish literature,  and  his  poetry  showed  its  influence.  It 
is  true  that  he  derived  many  poetic  impressions  directly 
through  the  eye  in  the  course  of  his  journeys  abroad, 
but  for  the  most  part  he  obtained  them  through  the 
foreign  romantic  poets  and  the  primitive  imagination  of 
the  northern  bards.  Had  he  been  in  closer  contact  with 
poetic  motives  in  life  itself,  he  might  have  been  touched 
with  passion;  but  as  he  felt  them  at  second-hand,  as  it 
were,  he  could  not  lift  his  mood  higher  than  the  region 
of  sentiment  in  that  considerable  portion  of  his  work 
which  deals  with  medievalism,  or  with  the  contemporary 
picturesqueness  which  still  survives  in  the  ruins  of  the 
Gothic  past.  In  those  parts  of  his  poetry  where  the 
literary  influence  is  less  obvious,  it  is  no  less  potent. 
He  was  a  poet  who  was  developed  by  books,  and  not  by 
experience;  even  when  he  draws  from  life  itself,  his 
cunning  is  bookish.  This  is  the  impression  already 
given  by  his  works,  and  his  biography  makes  it  deeper. 
It  is  the  "man  of  letters"  whose  history  is  given  to  us. 
The  poetic  temperament,  nevertheless,  is  very  frequently 
to  be  observed.  The  susceptibility  of  the  organization 
to  slight  changes  in  the  surroundings;  the  restlessness, 


220  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

the  weariness,  the  fret  of  the  spirit;  the  delight  in  receiv- 
ing the  impression,  and  the  reluctance  to  work  it  over 
into  expression;  the  joy  in  the  vision  that  comes  at  the 
rare  moment,  and  the  shrinking  from  the  labor  of  the 
spell  that  bids  it  stay  forever  and  be  seen  of  all  eyes  — 
these  and  the  other  common  qualities  of  temperament 
which  are  often  as  keen  in  those  who  have  no  faculty  of 
language,  can  be  noticed  throughout  all  his  long  life. 
Longfellow's  personality  is  revealed  in  these  passages,  but 
this  is  merely  the  light  and  shadow  of  life's  surface;  the 
poetic  nature  is  deeper  than  that.  Probably  the  point 
of  view  under  which  he  is  viewed  in  his  own  diary  is 
the  correct  one,  as  it  is  the  common  one  among  critics. 
His  art,  taste,  and  treatment  present  the  qualities  of 
culture;  and  the  poems  of  which  the  theme  is  immediately 
from  life  about  him  are  just  those  which  cause  him  to 
be  called  "the  poet  of  the  affections."  Outside  of  home- 
life,  books  were  his  inspiration;  in  other  words,  generally 
he  was  sustained  in  the  poetic  mood  by  the  beauty  and 
virtue  of  which  he  read. 

Some  light  is  thrown  upon  Longfellow's  methods  of 
composition.  He  wrote  with  singular  ease;  indeed,  we 
recollect  no  poet  of  equal  rank  who  is  known  to  have  been 
blessed  with  like  facility.  The  shorter  poems  and  the 
"psalms"  came  to  him  without  effort,  sometimes  "by  whole 
stanzas  and  not  by  lines,"  as  he  says,  and  they  required 
little  correction  —  usually,  it  seems,  only  the  strengthen- 
ing of  a  phrase,  but  no  complete  recasting.  Similarly  with 
the  long  poems,  when  his  subject  was  once  settled  on  and 
the  work  begun,  he  apparently  ran  on  "trippingly,"  and 
was  satisfie4  with  the  corrected  first  draft.  This  shows 
admirable  mastery  as  well  as  speed,  while  it  suggests  that 
the  feelings  of  the  poet  were  not  excited  to  any  great 


LONGFELLOW  221 

energy.  One  notes,  too,  that  his  subjects  for  shorter 
poems  were  frequently  selected  and  the  poems  written 
later;  a  practice  which  generally  indicates  the  forcing 
of  a  poet's  talents.  Another  characteristic,  which  is  rich 
in  suggestions  to  an  analyzer  of  literary  men,  is  the 
habit  he  exhibits  of  setting  down  in  his  diary  striking 
figures  of  rhetoric  heard  in  sermons  or  elsewhere,  not 
for  the  sake  of  the  thought,  but  of  the  form.  Sometimes 
one  comes  upon  a  landscape  sketched  in  a  few  exquisite 
lines,  but  such  entries  do  not  seem  to  be  notes  for 
future  work.  On  the  whole,  the  young  poet  will  not 
learn  much  about  the  craft  from  these  volumes;  so  far 
as  anything  can  be  inferred  from  such  slight  material, 
equability  marked  his  poetic  life  as  invariably  as  it  did 
his  social  intercourse. 

Thus  this  biography  in  nowise  contradicts  or  modifies 
the  popular  estimate  which  was  long  ago  arrived  at  in 
respect  to  the  poet.  It  merely  sustains  and  amplifies 
the  opinion  that  has  been  so  often  expressed.  One  is 
not  surprised  by  the  gift  of  the  intimate  and  un- 
guessed  record  of  a  noble  soul  —  one  of  those  memories 
which  are  shrines  of  the  ideal  life;  but  one  reads  what 
was  to  be  expected,  a  full  and  delightful  history  of  the 
external  aspects  of  a  lettered  life  in  a  refined  society, 
as  it  was  led  by  a  man  who  fulfilled  his  duties  in  the  varied 
relations  of  his  sphere  in  a  way  that  made  his  days 
beautiful  and  his  memory  a  humanizing  influence  upon 
all  who  have  any  perception  of  the  sources  of  its  charm. 
Our  polite  literature  gains  greatly  by  this.  Nevertheless 
these  volumes  are  neither  a  complete  account  nor  a 
thorough  study  of  Longfellow's  life.  They  occupy  in 
his  works  a  similar  place  to  Hawthorne's  note-books. 
Autobiography  is  of  necessity  an  imperfect  view  of  its 


222  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

writer's  individuality;  it  is  usually  invaluable,  it  is  often 
agreeable,  but  it  is  always  insufficient.  Other  memoirs 
must  supplement  this  by  showing  how  he  seemed  to  the 
eyes  of  others,  and  the  scholar  who  seeks  the  genesis  of  his 
poems  must  establish  the  logical  connection  between  the 
life  and  the  works.  Of  his  personality  we  are  not  likely 
to  know  more  —  one  suspects  there  was  really  little  more 
to  know. 

A  supplementary  volume  is  principally  devoted  to 
further  illustration  of  the  last  fifteen  years  of  the  poet's 
career,  when  he  was  enjoying  the  fruits  of  his  fame  in 
the  formal  respect  of  whatever  persons  of  distinction 
visited  our  shores,  and  in  the  common  appreciation  of 
his  countrymen,  whose  expressions  of  esteem  were  some- 
times more  awkward  and  tedious,  but  not  of  less  worth. 

Here  the  poet  is  seen  almost  entirely  in  his  mature 
manhood,  or  perhaps  one  may  fairly  say  in  his  old  age, 
since  his  principal  original  works  were  all  completed 
before  the  period  of  the  last  fifteen  years  set  in.  The 
scene  practically  does  not  change,  the  habits  of  life  are 
fixed,  the  character  of  the  whole  has  complete  harmony. 
This  limitation  of  the  view  gives  a  unity  of  impression 
rarely  to  be  derived  from  the  entire  story  of  an  active 
life,  and  the  time,  fortunately,  is  that  when  Longfellow 
was  most  attractive.  He  was  most  dear  to  his  country 
as  an  old  man,  and  that  is  the  character  in  which  he  is 
presented.  His  qualities,  too,  as  a  man  were  those  which 
age  most  improves  —  his  universal  kindness,  his  dignity 
of  breeding,  his  reposeful  nature,  could  have  full  effect 
only  with  ripe  years;  and  one  so  given  to  permanent 
friendships  as  he  was,  could  not  fail  to  grow  happier  in 
their  exercise,  and  more  noble  through  them  in  propor- 
tion as  they  lasted  out  time  and  tide.  The  story  of  Long- 


LONGFELLOW  223 

fellow's  care  for  his  friend  Greene  is,  in  these  new 
illustrations  of  it,  one  of  the  delightful  episodes  of  lite- 
rary biography. 

In  the  way  of  literature,  Longfellow  was  employed  in 
these  years  upon  the  drama,  and  the  simplicity  of  his  re- 
marks upon  it  are  instructive,  though  they  provoke  a 
smile.  He  was  not  efficient  as  a  dramatist,  and  perhaps 
no  competent  critic  would  claim  for  him  dramatic 
genius.  He  illustrates  how  far  drama  has  drifted  from 
literature.  Evidently  he  had  not  thought  much  upon 
the  general  subject,  and  was  but  little  skilled  in  knowl- 
edge of  its  conditions  or  in  criticism  of  its  aims,  methods, 
or  effects.  One  finds  him  saying,  after  reading  Victor 
Hugo:  "Perhaps  exaggeration  is  necessary  for  the  stage; 
I  am  inclined  to  think  it  is.  A  play,  like  a  bust  or  statue 
destined  for  a  large  room,  must  be  a  little  larger  than 
life."  He  speaks  of  Fechter's  Hamlet  thus:  "It  is 
pleasant  to  see  anything  so  like  nature  on  the  stage; 
not  the  everlasting  mouthing  and  ranting."  He  con- 
templated having  the  "New  England  Tragedies"  acted, 
and  wrote  to  Fields:  "As  to  anybody's  'adapting'  these 
Tragedies  for  the  stage,  I  do  not  like  the  idea  of  it  at  all. 
Prevent  this,  if  possible.  I  should,  however,  like  to 
have  the  opinion  of  some  good  actor  —  not  a  sensational 
actor  —  on  the  point.  I  should  like  to  have  Booth  look 
at  them."  He  actually  consulted  Bandmann  with  re- 
gard to  the  matter,  and  sets  down  the  answer:  "Band- 
mann writes  me  a  nice  letter  about  the  Tragedies,  but 
says  they  are  not  adapted  for  the  stage."  That  Long- 
fellow should  have  dreamed  of  having  them  acted,  shows 
how  far  out  of  his  element  he  was  in  composing  them. 
The  drama  was  to  him  a  book,  not  an  art. 

Elsewhere  he  makes  some  admirable  remarks  that 


224  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

spring  out  of  his  practice  of  the  art,  always  wise  and 
sometimes  profound,  as  is  this:  "It  is  a  great  mystery 
to  many  people  that  an  author  should  reveal  to  the  public 
secrets  that  he  shrinks  from  telling  to  his  most  intimate 
friends."  The  profound  thing  in  this,  if  any  one  should 
not  at  once  understand  our  application  of  the  word,  is 
that  he  does  not  stop  to  explain  the  "great  mystery"; 
to  him  it  is  simple  enough.  But  one  does  not  often  meet 
with  the  humor  shown  in  another  sentence,  in  a  letter 
to  Greene:  "You  cannot  improve  a  sonnet  by  making 
it  more  than  fourteen  lines  long."  It  is  strange  that, 
with  such  playfulness  as  he  exhibits  here  and  there,  and 
seems  to  have  indulged  in  more  easily  in  conversation, 
so  little  expression  of  it  is  to  be  found  in  his  works. 
For  this  quality  one  must  go  to  these  volumes,  though 
there  are  scenes  in  'The  Golden  Legend'  in  which  it 
has  colored  the  language  and  occasionally  touched  a 
character.  The  absence  of  the  classical  influences  in 
his  career  is  noticeable.  He  finds  in  the  Greek  anthology 
only  "dead  garlands."  Of  self-criticism  there  is  little. 
He  remarks  how  much  learning  Sumner  brought  back 
from  Italy,  where  he  himself  had  gained  only  impres- 
sions; and  the  joy  of  the  sentimentalist  in  remaining 
unconvinced  is  happily  expressed  when  he  says,  "I  let 
the  waves  of  argument  roll  on;  but  all  the  lilies  rise  again, 
and  are  beautiful  as  before."  The  poet  writing  in  prose 
is  often  to  be  observed  in  similar  figures  and  sentiments, 
and  once  or  twice  there  is  a  brief  letter  —  the  one  of 

consolation   "To  ,"   for   example  —  which   is   "an 

entire  and  perfect  chrysolite." 

There  are  others  besides  Longfellow  in  these  pages. 
As  we  have  remarked  before,  his  life  is  a  memorial  of 
a  distinguished  circle  as  well  as  of  a  man.  This  impres- 


LONGFELLOW  225 

sion  is  the  stronger  because  the  view  of  his  domestic  life 
has  been  practically  suppressed,  and  he  has  been  shown 
only  in  his  relations  with  his  books  and  his  friends.  For- 
tune favored  him  in  both.  Sumner,  as  before,  gains 
by  all  that  is  told  of  him  or  by  him.  One  is  tempted  to 
think  that  only  Longfellow  knew  him  as  a  man.  The 
letters  of  "Tom  Appleton"  afford  much  that  is  delectable. 
The  description  of  Mrs.  Browning,  in  1856,  as  "a  little 
concentrated  nightingale  living  in  a  bower  of  curls,"  has 
the  old  touch;  but  best  of  all  is  his  quoting  "an  expres- 
sion of  Mr.  T.  Lyman  to  me  years  ago:  'The  bother  of 
the  Yankee/  said  he,  'is  that  he  rubs  badly  at  the  junc- 
tion of  soul  and  body'  —  as  true  a  thing  as  ever  was 
said,  and  he  not  much  of  a  sayer  of  such  things." 


MOTLEY'S  CORRESPONDENCE 

THE  correspondence  of  an  illustrious  man,  printed 
often  more  because  of  his  reputation  won  in  some  one 
field  than  for  the  interest  of  the  letters  in  themselves, 
is  an  unfair  test  of  his  intellectual  or  social  attractive- 
ness; and  in  the  case  of  an  historian  in  whose  work  the 
telling  mental  qualities  are  largely  different  from  those 
which  give  vivacity  and  brilliancy  to  impromptu  letters, 
this  test  works  with  special  incompleteness.  Motley 
certainly,  in  addressing  his  wife,  children,  and  a  few 
intimate  friends,  did  not  write  for  immortality.  He  had 
not  the  point  in  style,  the  variety  in  interests,  the  copious- 
ness of  opinions  which  give  charm  and  body  to  a  collec- 
tion of  personal  letters;  and,  although  he  mingled  in  the 
society  of  famous  men  and  fine  women,  and  was  near  to 
great  events,  he  had  not  that  quickness  of  eye  and 
literary  power  of  brief  description  which  could  have 
painted  the  historical  scene  before  him  in  a  picturesque 
and  enlivening  manner.  His  methods  of  conceiving  his- 
tory were  alien  to  such  a  task;  he  required  a  large  can- 
vas and  heroic  figures,  and  something  of  the  breadth  that 
goes  with  the  spectacular,  before  he  could  deploy  his 
mind  and  imagination.  And,  besides,  there  was  so  con- 
siderable a  moral  element  in  his  enthusiasms,  a  sense  of 
the  forces  of  history  so  deeply  underlying  his  serious 
work,  that  he  was  to  a  certain  extent  disarmed  and  taken 
at  a  disadvantage  in  the  presence  of  the  personal,  the 
immediate  and  fragmentary  character  of  passing  and 

227 


228  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

incomplete  events.  These  two  volumes,  consequently, 
notwithstanding  their  real  interest  in  many  ways,  are  a 
disappointment,  if  any  one  looks  in  them  for  more  than 
illustrations  and  fuller  knowledge  of  the  man's  charac- 
ter as  it  was  in  daily  and  private  life;  but  if  one  is  con- 
tent to  look  for  no  more  than  this,  they  afford  the 
portrait  of  an  American  whom  his  fellow-countrymen 
will  be  more  proud  to  acknowledge  after  their  perusal  — 
one  who  did  honor  to  his  country  by  his  personal  bear- 
ing among  men,  by  his  living  and  thinking  hi  ordinary 
ways,  quite  as  much  as  by  his  literary  fame. 

He  belongs  distinctly  to  a  type  that  is  passing  away, 
or  at  least  is  suffering  such  changes  outwardly  and  in- 
wardly as  to  be  taking  on  a  new  form.  He  was  one  of 
the  Boston  boys  when  Boston  was  more  preeminently 
a  commercial  town,  with  all  that  means  on  the  social 
side  of  life.  He  was  educated  at  Bancroft's  Northamp- 
ton school  and  at  Harvard  College,  and  at  an  early  age 
went  to  Europe  for  legal  study  at  German  universities 
and  for  travel,  and  of  all  these  opportunities  he  made  a 
serious  use.  The  first  stirring  of  his  historical  imagi- 
nation and  the  beginning  of  his  fluent  and  ample  style 
may  readily  be  discerned  in  his  pleasant  letters  home, 
which  are  what  such  letters  from  such  a  youth  should 
be,  but  have  only  autobiographical  value.  The  trial  of 
his  talents  in  novel-writing,  and  the  reasons  why  he 
selected  the  Netherlands  as  the  scene  of  his  historical 
labors,  are  not  touched  upon  in  these  letters;  the  collec- 
tion suffers  from  the  lack  of  continuity  in  the  series, 
both  here  and  in  later  life.  After  his  departure  for 
Europe,  however,  there  is  sufficient  material  to  make  out 
plainly  and  fully  the  quiet  student  life  he  led,  the  ab- 
sorption of  his  mind  in  his  work,  and  the  visitings  of 


MOTLEY'S   CORRESPONDENCE  229 

doubt  and  melancholy  which  must  attack  a  solitary 
scholar  before  the  recognition  of  his  powers  by  others, 
in  judgment  upon  definite  work  already  accomplished, 
gives  him  confidence  in  himself.  The  publication  of  his 
first  volumes,  from  which  he  apparently  did  not  hope 
for  success,  settled  his  position  as  an  author  to  be  widely 
and  seriously  regarded,  and  he  set  to  work  to  continue 
the  series  with  a  renewed  energy  which  shows  how  much 
he  was  invigorated  by  the  warm  applause  he  had  received. 
Of  his  labors  in  the  workshop,  however,  the  letters  afford 
the  very  slightest  glimpses  —  they  are  singularly  free 
from  the  burden  of  his  daily  tasks,  and,  while  we  might 
desire  to  see  more  of  the  student  at  his  desk,  the  fear  of 
egotism  seems  to  have  haunted  him  to  such  a  degree  that 
he  spoke  of  himself  and  his  doings,  even  to  his  wife,  with 
an  uneasy  consciousness,  and  was  always  glad  to  drop 
the  subject.  His  occasional  separation  from  his  family 
and  his  long  absence  from  home  required  him,  neverthe- 
less, to  give  some  account  of  his  days,  and  to  this  necessity 
the  correspondence  is  mainly  due. 

The  more  entertaining  chapters  are  naturally  those 
which  detail,  almost  like  a  diary  of  dinner  engagements, 
his  association  with  leading  persons  in  England,  and, 
more  narrowly,  upon  the  Continent.  In  London  society 
he  was  received  with  great  cordiality  from  many,  and 
with  courtesy  and  distinction  from  all.  What  was  his 
charm  it  is  impossible  to  discover  from  his  own  account 
of  the  matter,  and  others  have  not  told  us;  but  he  must 
have  been  singularly  agreeable  to  have  won  and  kept 
the  consideration  of  the  circle  in  which  he  moved.  He 
was  interested  first  of  all  in  the  eminent  literary  men  and 
statesmen  of  the  day,  and  in  the  group  which  was  noted 
for  kindly  disposition  to  Americans.  His  portraits  of 


23o  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

these  people  lack  condensation  and  vividness;  he  was 
better  at  describing  a  character  than  a  personality,  and 
consequently  he  has  not  written  anything  of  them  spe- 
cially remarkable.  It  is  rather  the  tone  in  which  he 
speaks  than  the  words  he  uses  which  exhibits  their  im- 
pression on  him.  No  man  is  more  agreeably  presented 
than  the  aged  Lord  Lyndhurst,  who  at  the  time  of  the 
war  wrote  to  him  as  a  fellow  countryman,  remember- 
ing his  birth  on  American  soil;  but  this  characterization 
is  not  made  in  any  one  passage.  Mrs.  Norton,  too,  and 
Lady  William  Russell  are  similarly  a  part  of  the  pleasure 
which  the  letters  give,  as  a  picture  of  humane  and  hos- 
pitable English  life,  but  they  are  mingled  with  the  vari- 
ous scenes.  Thackeray  appears  as  "a  colossal  infant - 
smooth,  white,  shiny  ringlety  hair  (flaxen,  alas,  with 
advancing  years),  a  roundish  face,  with  a  little  dab  of 
a  nose  upon  which  it  is  a  perpetual  wonder  how  he  keeps 
his  spectacles,  a  sweet,  but  rather  piping  voice,  with  some- 
thing of  a  childish  treble  about  it,  and  a  very  tall,  slightly 
stooping  figure,"  and  without  any  distinction  in  his  talk 
more  than  in  his  white  choker.  Macaulay  is  a  sick 
man,  whenever  seen,  with  the  cough  which  foreboded 
the  end,  a  blank  face,  and  "as  it  were  badly  lighted," 
nothing  luminous  in  his  eyes  nor  impressive  in  his  brows, 
a  spacious  forehead  "scooped  entirely  away  in  the  region 
where  benevolence  ought  to  be,  while  beyond  rise  reve- 
rence, firmness,  and  self-esteem  like  Alps  on  Alps,"  while 
the  eyes  beneath  are  almost  closed  with  swollen  lids. 
Motley,  who  did  not  wish  to  talk,  did  not  find  him  too 
much  an  autocrat  of  the  conversation.  Brougham,  with 
snow-white  and  shiny  hair,  a  knobby  and  bumpy  head, 
furrowed  with  age,  and  a  vast  mouth,  is  principally  re- 
membered by  this  observer  for  his  incredible  nose,  which 


MOTLEY'S   CORRESPONDENCE  231 

he  wagged  like  an  elephant's  proboscis.  These,  how- 
ever, are  all  familiar  features,  and  even  "Dizzy,"  as  Mrs. 
Norton  describes  him,  "with  a  black  velvet  coat  lined 
with  satin,  purple  trousers  with  a  gold  band  running 
down  the  outside  seam,  a  scarlet  waistcoat,  long  lace 
ruffles  falling  down  to  the  tips  of  his  fingers,  white  gloves 
with  several  brilliant  rings  outside  them,  and  long  black 
ringlets  rippling  down  his  shoulders,"  would  not  be 
strange  except  for  the  impossibility  that  the  eye  labors 
under  in  endeavoring  to  retain  his  youthful  figure  as  a 
thing  to  be  believed  in.  Of  more  interest  is  the  sketch  of 
Maximilian  just  before  his  departure  to  Mexico:  "About 
thirty,  with  an  adventurous  disposition,  some  imagina- 
tion, a  turn  for  poetry,"  an  author  "not  without  talent," 
who  "relieves  his  prose  jog-trot  by  breaking  into  a  canter 
of  poetry;  an  adorer  of  bullfights,  who  half  regrets  the 
Inquisition,  and  considers  the  Duke  of  Alva  everything 
noble  and  chivalrous,  and  the  most-abused  of  men."  The 
Comte  de  Paris  is  better  treated  —  "a  model  of  what  a 
young  prince  ought  to  be  in  manner,  in  character,  in  con- 
versation, in  accomplishments.  To  be  sure,  he  bribed  me 
by  his  unaffected,  sincere,  and  enthusiastic  interest  in  my 
country;  a  more  loyal  and  ardent  American  does  not 
exist  than  this  King's  son."  Other  royal  personages  are  to 
be  seen  on  the  page,  always  through  republican  eyes,  and 
usually  not  to  their  advantage,  except  in  the  case  of  the 
frank  and  straightforward  King  of  Holland  and  his  re- 
fined and  womanly  Queen,  always  the  unassuming  friend 
of  the  best  within  her  horizon. 

To  his  countrymen,  however,  the  most  welcome  part  of 
these  volumes  is  not  what  they  tell  of  the  great  ones  of 
the  earth,  or  of  the  social  grace  and  hospitableness  of 
England  in  its  highest  circles;  but  rather  the  fullness  and 


232  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

clearness  with  which  they  reveal  the  unspoiled  American 
heart  which,  through  long  residence  in  foreign  lands  and 
in  the  midst  of  aristocratic  fascinations,  Motley  kept 
beating  in  his  breast.  No  word  can  now  be  breathed 
against  his  patriotism  or  his  entire  adhesion  to  and  belief 
in  the  democracy  of  his  own  country.  His  sketch  of  Aus- 
trian society,  in  which  birth  alone  gives  station,  might  be 
expected  to  contain  some  comment  from  one  whose  chief 
claim  to  attention  was  not  diplomacy  but  literature.  He 
could  not  be  flattered,  he  says,  to  be  received  as  a  dip- 
lomatist when  he  could  not  be  as  a  man.  In  his  reflections 
upon  English  aristocracy  he  is  not  less  loyal  to  the  tra- 
ditions in  which  he  was  bred.  He  acknowledged  himself 
to  be  a  spectator  in  London,  and  had  no  desire  to  be  "one 
of  themselves."  After  stating  the  committal  of  America 
absolutely  to  the  future  of  democracy,  he  goes  on  to  say: 
"For  me,  I  like  democracy.  I  don't  say  it  is  pretty  or 
genteel  or  jolly.  But  it  has  a  reason  for  existing,  and  is 
a  fact  in  America,  and  is  founded  in  the  immutable  prin- 
ciple of  reason  and  justice.  Aristocracy  certainly  presents 
more  brilliant  social  phenomena,  more  luxurious  social 
enjoyments.  Such  a  system  is  very  cheerful  for  a  few 
thousand  select  specimens  out  of  a  few  hundred  millions 
of  the  human  race.  It  has  been  my  lot  and  yours  to  see 
how  much  splendor,  how  much  intellectual  and  physical 
refinement,  how  much  enjoyment  of  the  highest  character 
has  been  created  by  the  English  aristocracy;  but  what  a 
price  is  paid  for  it.  Think  of  a  human  being  working  all 
day  long,  from  six  in  the  morning  to  seven  at  night,  for 
fifteen  or  twenty  kreutzers  a  day  in  Moravia  or  Bohemia, 
Ireland  or  Yorkshire,  for  forty  or  fifty  years,  to  die  in 
the  workhouse  at  last!  This  is  the  lot  of  the  great  major- 
ity all  over  Europe;  and  yet  they  are  of  the  same  flesh  and 


MOTLEY'S   CORRESPONDENCE  233 

blood,  the  natural  equals  in  every  way  of  the  Howards 
and  Stanleys,  Esterhazys  and  Liechtensteins." 

And  again  he  says: 

"I  don't  think  there  is  any  danger  of  my  losing  my 
American  feelings  and  my  republican  tastes,  and  I  trust 
I  can  look  on  these  scenes  of  exquisite  and  intelligent  lux- 
ury objectively,  as  the  Germans  say,  without  confounding 
the  characters  of  spectator  and  actor.  .  .  .  Much  as  I 
can  appreciate  and  enjoy  esthetically,  sentimentally,  and 
sensuously  the  infinite  charm,  refinement,  and  grace  of 
English  life,  especially  country  life,  yet  I  feel  too  keenly 
what  a  fearful  price  is  paid  by  the  English  people  in  order 
that  this  splendid  aristocracy  with  their  parks  and  castles, 
and  shootings  and  fishings  and  fox-huntings,  their  stately 
and  unlimited  hospitality,  their  lettered  ease  and  learned 
leisure,  may  grow  fat,  ever  to  be  in  danger  of  finding  my 
judgment  corrupted  by  it.  At  the  same  time  it  is  as  well 
not  to  indulge  too  long  and  too  copiously  in  the  Circean 
draughts  of  English  hospitality." 

Doubtless  he  was  fortified  in  his  patriotism  by  the  in- 
tense passion  aroused  by  the  Civil  War.  In  all  he  has  to 
say  of  that  conflict  (and  he  has  very  much  to  say)  there 
is  the  touch  of  a  burning  enthusiasm,  of  an  overflowing 
interest,  of  personal  anxiety  and  hope,  of  a  home-felt 
share  in  the  defeats  and  triumphs  of  the  country's  cause. 
He  had  the  misfortune  to  differ  from  his  father  upon  these 
topics,  and  he  did  not  permit  himself  to  speak  of  them 
to  him;  but  in  his  letters  to  other  members  of  the  family 
he  gave  full  expression  to  his  feelings.  He  perceived  with 
great  definiteness  the  lines  of  the  conflict,  and  especially 
the  contest  of  moral  forces  and  the  issues  of  civilization 
involved  in  them.  In  devoting  his  life  to  the  story  of 
liberty  in  the  Netherlands  he  had  gone  to  school  at  the 


234  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

fountain;  and  he  was  so  grounded  in  the  love  of  the  ideas 
the  national  cause  stood  for,  as  well  as  in  the  affection  for 
his  own  country  which  life  abroad  in  his  case  could  only 
intensify,  that  he  was  bound,  as  by  a  natural  law,  to 
throw  himself  heart  and  soul  into  the  Northern  cause. 
He  was  able  in  consequence  to  state  the  question  so  clearly 
and  forcibly  in  England  as  to  do  great  service  there,  be- 
fore he  returned  to  this  country  to  be  near  the  scene  of 
affairs;  and  after  his  appointment  to  Vienna  he  kept  in 
close  connection  with  that  body  of  Englishmen  who,  with 
Bright  and  Mill  at  their  head,  befriended  our  interests. 
The  episode  of  his  return  home  in  1861  is  one  of  the 
capital  chapters  in  the  volumes.  He  represents  the  scene, 
the  feelings,  the  confusion  of  the  time,  as  a  part  thereof; 
and  whether  at  Boston  or  Washington,  his  pulse  tells  the 
beat  of  the  hour.  The  optimism  of  the  nation  at  its  first 
awakening  is  reproduced  in  him  with  almost  amusing  com- 
pleteness; and  throughout  the  war  the  readiness  with 
which  he  recoiled  from  the  depression  of  defeat,  and  the 
vigor  of  his  faith  in  our  triumph,  are  attractive  traits  of 
his  character.  The  anecdote  of  his  finding  himself  in  so 
oppressive  a  solitude  when  he  received  the  news  of  the 
fall  of  Vicksburg  is  pathetic;  he  "screeched  it  through 
the  keyhole"  to  his  daughter;  but  "you,"  he  says,  address- 
ing Dr.  Holmes,  "who  were  among  people  grim  and  self- 
contained  usually  —  who,  I  trust,  were  jailing  on  each 
other's  necks  in  the  public  streets,  and  shouting  with 
tears  in  their  eyes  and  triumph  in  their  hearts  —  can  pic- 
ture my  isolation."  This  is  the  contemporary  life  of 
those  years  still  warm  on  the  page;  and  many  of  these 
pages  are  dedicated  to  the  joys  and  sorrows,  public  and 
private,  of  the  time,  in  a  way  to  deepen  regret  in  our 
minds  at  the  memory  of  the  unmerited  trials  which  so 


MOTLEY'S   CORRESPONDENCE  235 

true  an  American  heart  suffered  at  the  hands  of  our  na- 
tional Government. 

His  estimate  of  the  men  of  the  war  is  also  a  close  ren- 
dering of  contemporary  feeling,  especially  with  regard  to 
the  military  hope  of  the  hour,  Scott  or  McClellan  or 
Grant.  The  most  interesting  of  these,  however,  is  the 
impression  he  obtained  of  Lincoln,  whom  he  saw  only  for 
a  short  hour  at  the  opening  of  the  fight.  He  was  struck 
at  once  by  the  substantial  characteristics  of  the  Presi- 
dent, and,  in  his  case,  this  was  notable;  there  is  nowhere 
any  wonder  expressed  that  a  "backwoodsman"  had  come 
to  so  responsible  a  place,  but  only  gratitude  that  an  honest 
and  true  man  was  at  the  helm.  He  writes  of  him  as 
early  as  June,  1862,  with  noticeable  accuracy:  "I  think 
Mr.  Lincoln  embodies  singularly  well  the  healthy  Ameri- 
can mind.  He  revolts  at  extreme  measures,  and  moves  in 
a  steady  way  to  the  necessary  end.  He  reads  the  signs  of 
the  times,  and  will  never  go  faster  than  the  people  at  his 
back.  So  his  slowness  seems  sometimes  like  hesitation; 
but  I  have  not  a  doubt  that  when  the  people  wills  it,  he 
will  declare  that  will."  And  after  the  assassination,  recur- 
ring to  his  first  impression  of  Lincoln,  he  writes:  "He 
seemed  to  have  a  window  in  his  breast.  There  was  some- 
thing almost  childlike  in  his  absence  of  guile  and  affecta- 
tion of  any  kind.  Of  course,  on  the  few  occasions  when  I 
had  the  privilege  of  conversing  with  him,  it  was  impossible 
for  me  to  pretend  to  form  an  estimate  as  to  his  intellectual 
power,  but  I  was  struck  with  his  simple  wisdom,  his 
straightforward,  unsophisticated  common  sense.  What 
our  republic,  what  the  whole  world,  has  to  be  grateful  for, 
is  that  God  has  endowed  our  chief  magistrate,  at  such 
a  momentous  period  of  history,  with  so  lofty  a  moral 
nature  and  with  so  loving  and  forgiving  a  disposition." 


236  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

Perhaps  in  all  these  few  lines  of  encomium  which  from 
time  to  time  he  writes  upon  the  leading  figures  of  the  war, 
we  may  discern  the  hero-loving  imagination  working  be- 
fore the  facts  were  accomplished;  but  it  was  Motley's 
good  fortune  to  have  nourished  his  mind  with  contempla- 
tion of  such  men  in  the  great  struggle  of  the  Netherlands, 
and  he  was  thus  in  a  position  more  readily  to  appreciate 
them. 

It  remains  to  say  a  word  about  Motley's  friendship 
with  Bismarck,  which  is  a  leading  topic  in  the  volumes. 
They  were  college  friends,  or  even  schoolboys,  together, 
and  the  tie  which  bound  them  was  this  early  one  cher- 
ished through  years  by  both  of  them.  They  recognized 
the  vast  difference  in  their  political  creeds,  but  they  also 
agreed  that  the  condition  of  affairs  in  Prussia  and  America 
differed  as  widely  as  their  views,  and  their  friendship  for- 
tunately was  so  purely  personal  that  opinion  did  not  enter 
into  it  as  any  part  of  the  cement.  Bismarck's  letters  are 
almost  boyish  or  old-boyish,  in  spirit,  and  are  half  rollick- 
ing. They  show  the  Chancellor  out  of  his  gravity;  but 
this  is  only  to  see  him  more  near.  The  accounts  which 
Motley  furnishes  of  the  household  arrangements  and  pri- 
vate habits  of  the  Bismarcks  fill  out  the  picture;  and  if 
there  is  something  of  the  German  country  baron  and  of 
squirearchy  in  them,  this  is  the  homeliness  of  truth.  Bis- 
marck appears  in  a  more  amiable  and  noble  light;  his  sin- 
cerity is  much  dwelt  upon,  his  force  and  grasp  are  rather 
indicated  than  shown,  but  the  conversation  died  on  the 
air  that  heard  it.  The  most  valuable  passage  is  the  fol- 
lowing: 

"He  said  he  used  when  younger  to  think  himself  a 
clever  fellow  enough,  but  now  he  was  convinced  that  no- 
body had  any  control  over  events  — that  nobody  was 


MOTLEY'S   CORRESPONDENCE  237 

really  powerful  or  great;  and  it  made  him  laugh  when  he 
heard  himself  complimented  as  wise,  foreseeing,  and  ex- 
ercising great  influence  over  the  world.  A  man  in  the 
situation  in  which  he  had  been  placed  was  obliged,  while 
outsiders,  for  example,  were  speculating  whether  to-mor- 
row it  would  be  rain  or  sunshine,  to  decide  promptly,  It 
will  rain  or  it  will  be  fine;  and  to  act  accordingly  with  all 
the  forces  at  his  command.  If  he  guessed  right,  all  the 
world  said,  What  sagacity  —  what  prophetic  power!  If 
wrong,  all  the  old  women  would  have  beaten  him  with 
broomsticks.  If  he  had  learned  nothing  else,  he  said  he 
had  learned  modesty." 

It  may  be  said  generally  —  and  it  is  pleasant  to  be  able 
to  say  such  a  thing  of  a  collection  of  private  letters  —  that 
this  correspondence  presents  every  one  whom  it  brings 
forward  in  a  way  to  win  regard  for  him  and  not  to  lessen 
it.  The  social  reminiscences,  bare  as  they  often  are,  are 
pervaded  by  hospitable  and  kindly  feelings,  and  the  liter- 
ary and  political  portions  are  without  any  disagreeable 
traits,  but,  on  the  contrary,  show  Motley's  friendliness 
and  patriotism,  and  a  readiness  to  take  men  at  the  best 
possible,  which  now  honor  his  memory.  It  is,  neverthe- 
less, his  own  reputation  that  will  be  increased  and  en- 
deared by  these  proofs  of  his  devotion.  His  belief  in  his 
own  people,  his  anxiety  to  serve  them  in  places  of  honor- 
able ambition  or  in  private  station,  and  his  humane  and 
sanguine  temperament  in  the  great  conflict  of  his  genera- 
tion, his  laboriousness  in  his  studies,  and  his  unaffected 
friendliness  with  many  persons  of  intellect,  refinement, 
and  good- will,  make  us  the  more  glad  to  know  that  he 
remains,  after  all  his  disappointments,  to  the  last  line  of 
his  pen  unalienated  from  ourselves. 


BAYARD  TAYLOR 

IT  is  so  much  a  literary  fashion  to  divide  a  man's  life 
into  periods  of  development,  although  they  may  not  in 
reality  differ  from  Shakespeare's  "Seven  Ages,"  that  one 
is  often  inclined  to  be  impatient  with  such  an  exordium. 
In  Bayard  Taylor's  growth,  however,  there  seem  to  have 
been  two  lives,  so  marked  was  the  change  in  his  nature; 
and  he  has,  in  fact,  left  two  reputations  in  consequence 
-one  widespread  and  established,  the  other  narrow  in 
its  range  and  of  doubtful  permanence.  Out  of  the  still 
farm  life  of  the  Quaker  settlement  in  Chester  County, 
where  he  was  cradled  into  poetry  in  the  midst  of  a  simple 
and  pure  people  and  under  the  guardianship  of  a  quiet 
and  cheerful  landscape,  he  came  at  a  very  early  age  into 
the  excitement,  the  busy  triviality,  and  incessant  vicis- 
situde of  our  earlier  journalism;  and  having  made  a  suc- 
cessful stroke  at  the  start  by  his  first  book  of  travels, 
he  won  his  way  with  rapidity  and  comparative  ease  to 
the  position  of  best  American  reporter  of  scenes  and  in- 
cidents. This  was  what  he  called  his  service  of  Mam- 
mon, and  he  said  he  hated  it.  But  from  the  first  there 
was  a  purely  literary  strain  in  his  blood,  a  spring  of  poetic 
thought  in  his  heart  that  would  not  be  choked,  and  an 
effort  of  his  will  toward  artistic  expression  of  the  best 
of  his  spirit.  His  early  friends,  the  sponsors  of  his 
baptism  before  the  muses,  were  not  of  the  choicest. 
Rufus  Wilmot  Griswold  was  the  editor  to  discover  him; 
but  for  the  youth  to  whom  Griswold  was  a  Maecenas, 

239 


24o  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

the  auguries  were  certainly  of  doubtful  complexion;  and 
when  he  found  his  Augustus  in  the  person  of  the  natty 
Willis,  the  odds  against  his  making  a  man  of  himself 
were  to  be  counted  off  only  by  his  innate  virtue  and 
the  vigor  of  his  mind.  It  is  as  good,  at  least,  as  one  of 
his  own  novels  to  see  from  his  youthful  letters  how  much 
he  prized  the  first  literary  society  into  which  he  was  ad- 
mitted, the  New  York  coterie  of  mutual  admiration  and 
secret  envy,  of  which  here  and  there  in  our  literary  annals 
some  mention  may  still  be  found  under  the  name  of  "the 
Literati,"  as  they  called  themselves.  Taylor  was  so  far 
imposed  on  by  it  as  to  write  of  "that  charmed  circle  of 
artist  and  author  life,  which  is  the  only  real  life  of  this 
world,"  and  he  was  in  middle  life  before  he  described  it 
as  under-bred,  half-refined,  and  superficially  Cultivated. 
Perhaps  his  travels,  by  removing  him  from  the  danger 
of  constantly  breathing  this  atmosphere,  served  him  bet- 
ter than  he  knew.  However  that  may  have  been,  it  is 
enough  to  beget  a  charitable  spirit  in  one  to  remember 
that  in  his  youth  journalism  was  his  taskmaster  and 
Willis  the  high-priest  of  his  cult. 

Taylor  quickly  enlarged  his  circle  through  the  oppor- 
tunities of  travel  and  the  readiness  and  freshness  of  his 
instincts  for  fraternity.  He  made  friends  with  everybody 
he  met,  and  one  might  almost  say  with  every  creature, 
even  to  savage  beasts.  He  enlarged  his  mind,  too,  and 
on  returning  from  his  visit  to  the  East  he  was  able  to 
draw  to  himself  an  audience  distinctly  his  own.  Money 
flowed  in  from  books,  lectures,  and  successful  invest- 
ments, and  he  built  Cedarcroft  and  settled  down  in  the 
expectation  that  fortune  would  continue  to  shower  gifts 
upon  him.  He  was  soon  to  be  ready,  he  thought,  to 
be  a  poet;  he  had  been  making  sure  of  his  bread  first, 


BAYARD    TAYLOR  241 

and  now  he  would  make  sure  of  his  fame.  But  the 
war  came,  and  when  it  was  gone  there  was  a  new  nation, 
and  Taylor  found  he  had  outlived  his  early  reputation 
and  had  lost  his  own  audience.  Trouble  in  one  form  or 
another  was  at  hand.  His  manor-house  on  the  paternal 
acres  was  a  millstone  round  his  neck;  and  finally,  after  a 
long  struggle  of  incessant  hard  work  at  book-making,  he 
went  back  to  his  hack-life  on  the  newspaper  from  which 
he  was  relieved  by  his  appointment  as  minister  to  the 
German  court  and  his  speedy  death.  In  the  latter  part 
of  his  career  he  had  translated  "Faust"  and  written  long 
poems,  and  it  was  for  these  works  that  he  cared;  for  he 
had  learned  by  experience  the  ephemeral  nature  of  a 
traveler's  reputation,  and  he  desired  most  ardently  to 
leave  an  enduring  name.  The  mass  of  his  writings  is 
very  large,  but  his  heart  was  in  his  poetry  only; 
the  rest  was  what  he  called  mere  pot-boiling  literature. 
In  these  last  years,  too,  there  was  an  expansion  of  his 
intellectual  nature  and  a  sharpening  of  his  artistic  per- 
ception, due  in  large  measure  to  his  study  of  Goethe,  who 
overmastered  his  mind  and  determined  the  character  of 
the  latest  products  of  his  genius.  It  was  from  the 
Goethean  point  of  view  that  he  looked  down  almost  con- 
temptuously on  the  earlier  period  of  his  literary  activity, 
and  looked  forward  and  up  to  the  future  work  of  his 
hands,  the  true  work,  which  was  to  prolong  his  memory 
among  men,  His  death  was  thus,  he  would  have  thought, 
as  truly  premature  as  if  he  had  died  in  youth.  Hope 
was  so  strong  in  him  that  when  past  fifty  the  best  of  his 
life  seemed  still  before  him. 

The  most  prominent  point  in  the  popular  conception 
of  Bayard  Taylor  is  that  he  was  a  man  of  great  vitality; 
and,  as  is  frequently  the  case,  the  people  have  seized  on 


242  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

the  main  characteristic.  The  activity  of  his  mind  was 
enormous,  and  it  may  fairly  be  said  that  it  was  the  over- 
flow of  physical  health  in  no  small  degree.  But  just  as 
he  would  say  that  the  public  did  not  see  that  he  could 
not  be  so  good  a  traveler  had  he  not  been  a  poet,  so  the 
vital  force  that  enabled  him  to  grasp  and  master  such 
masses  of  work  would  never  have  sustained  him  had  he 
not  been  buoyed  up  also  by  an  eagerness  of  the  spirit. 
The  trait  his  biography  reveals  on  nearly  every  page,  from 
the  days  of  youthful  ardor  to  those  of  untiring  manhood, 
is  aspiration  of  the  most  unflagging  and  incorruptible 
kind.  Whether  Taylor  succeeded  or  not  in  realizing  the 
fondest  wish  of  his  heart,  to  be  known  as  one  of  his 
country's  great  poets,  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  always 
was  working  upward  to  the  plane  of  their  life  with  a 
high,  firm  purpose  that  grew  more  strong  and  simple  at 
each  turn  of  his  worldly  fortune.  It  was  because  of 
this  aspiration  that  the  difference  between  his  first  and 
second  period  has  so  marked  a  character  as  to  s^em  a 
difference  between  two  lives;  he  left  his  youthful  environ- 
ment and  all  that  it  contained  behind  him,  and  rose  out 
of  "the  Literati"  into  literature. 

It  belongs  to  this  strong  aspiration,  too,  that  he  was 
so  avaricious  of  praise,  hoarded  up  his  commendations 
from  "the  poets,"  and  overvalued  their  meaning.  He 
was  all  his  days  hungry  for  recognition;  he  welcomed  it 
from  any  quarter,  and  repaid  it  profusely  with  his  own 
good-will.  It  was  not  vanity  that  made  him  listen  so 
keenly  for  applause;  it  was  not  self-conceit  that  was 
bred  in  him  by  the  praise  he  got;  and  yet  it  is  not  a 
pleasant  characteristic  to  meet  with  when  one  finds  the 
hero  so  anxious  for  the  roses.  It  made  some  people  mis- 
understand and  dislike  Taylor  in  his  lifetime,  and  there 


BAYARD    TAYLOR  243 

is  in  it  certainly  some  proof  that  he  was  without  the 
assurance  that  goes  with  matured  genius  of  high  order. 
A  discomfortable  doubt  of  his  position  always  haunted 
him,  and  this  made  him  prize  distinction  of  an  outward 
kind,  and  practically  look  to  his  friends  to  mint  his  coin 
with  their  royal  approval.  The  trait  of  the  parvenu, 
too,  is  very  disagreeably  conspicuous  in  the  attitude  of 
his  mind  toward  the  great  men  whom  he  met,  and  par- 
ticularly in  his  pleasure  at  being  favored  by  Bismarck 
and  others  whose  worldly  position  attracted  his  respect- 
ful admiration.  It  is  said  that  we  all  like  titles,  and 
perhaps  he  shared  a  national  weakness;  but  it  would 
seem  rather  that  this  regard  for  the  aristocratic  was  an- 
other phase  of  his  desire  to  be  admitted  to  an  inner  cir- 
cle, as  if  he  were  in  some  way  accredited  by  such  an 
admission. 

To  meet  at  once  a  second  questionable  trait,  he  was 
always  self-absorbed,  engaged  mainly  in  his  own  affairs, 
with  a  word  now  and  then  for  others  and  what  they  were 
doing  and  hoping,  but  nevertheless,  kindly  and  cordial 
though  he  was,  essentially  preoccupied  with  his  plans 
and  deeds.  He  was  too  busy,  in  fact,  to  think  about 
other  matters  than  his  own;  he  had  no  time.  Of  course 
he  was  not  lacking  in  any  liberality  to  his  kindred  and 
his  friends;  he  gave  what  he  had  —  his  good- fortune, 
his  hospitality,  the  favor  of  his  name,  the  good-will  of 
his  heart  —  everything  except  his  thoughts.  For  this 
reason  his  letters  are  concerned,  more  than  is  usual,  with 
private  and  temporary  details — :his  new  ventures  in 
material  or  literary  affairs,  and  especially  with  what  he 
was  going  to  do;  for  he  was  more  attentive  to  the  future 
than  to  the  present.  Thus  one  comes  about  again  to 
what  was  the  leading  mark,  the  saving  power  of  his  life 


244  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

: — his  irrepressible  aspiration,  of  which  his  deference 
to  authority  and  his  engrossing  interest  in  the  develop- 
ment of  himself  were,  in  part,  results.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  point  out  how  fit  such  a  nature  was  to  imbibe  the  ideas 
of  Goethe  and  incorporate  them  in  his  own  life. 

Throughout  the  latter  part  of  his  career  Bayard 
Taylor  evidently  felt  much  aggrieved  by  the  fact  that 
the  people  judged  him  by  his  achievements  in  the  lower 
walk  of  literature.  At  first,  when  his  mental  horizon  was 
still  bounded  by  a  foreign  landscape,  he  was  pleased 
to  be  known  as  the  most  successful  traveler  of  his  age, 
and,  if  he  dipped  into  poetry,  as  he  could  not  help 
doing,  he  wrote  a  Californian  ballad.  But  after  "the  age 
of  sensations  and  short  poems,"  as  he  called  it,  was  gone 
by,  and  especially  after  he  had  translated  "Faust,"  he 
sent  letters  to  the  newspaper  for  pay  only,  and  occupied 
himself  with  the  ambition  of  composing,  not  epics,  to  be 
sure,  but  a  "cosmic  poem"  -  -  one  or  more,  according  to 
the  length  of  his  life,  for  there  was  never  any  question 
in  his  own  mind  that  he  was  inexhaustible.  The  ex- 
perience he  had  acquired  in  outgrowing  the  bonds  of  his 
early  education  and  breaking  away  from  the  formulas 
of  Chester  County  life,  and  his  observations  of  the  creeds 
of  alien  races,  with  the  knowledge  thus  impressed  upon 
him  as  to  the  contingencies  of  religious  dogma,  had  made 
a  foundation  in  his  mind  for  a  poem  of  philosophic  scope, 
and  he  wrote  one  or  two  of  such  a  character.  They  may 
have  been  "cosmic,"  but  they  were  not  popular,  and  since 
his  death  they  have  not  grown  in  esteem.  Some  of  his 
Arab  lyrics  will  outlive  "Prince  Deucalion." 

Without  undertaking  to  decide  whether  Taylor's  com- 
plaint that  the  people  looked  on  him  as  a  traveler  pri- 
marily and  as  a  poet  only  secondarily,  was  just  or  not, 


BAYARD   TAYLOR  245 

one  may  make  one  or  two  observations  on  his  poetic 
method.  He  wrote  with  facility,  and  his  composition 
was  unusually  rapid,  but  the  subject,  he  frequently  de- 
clares, was  for  years  in  his  mind  slowly  taking  shape 
and  was  at  last  suddenly  developed.  He  speaks  of  poems 
as  of  other  literary  work  —  a  newspaper  article  or  a 
review  for  example  —  as  if  they  could  be  made  to  order: 
so  many  last  week,  so  many  to  be  ready  by  such  a  day 
next  month;  and  similarly  of  long  poems:  he  will  be 
through  at  such  a  date,  and  there  will  be  so  many  lines  — 
and  this  he  knows  before  the  draft  is  completed.  These 
trifles  are  straws,  but  they  show  a  good  deal;  and  from 
them  and  other  hints  the  impression  is  left  on  the  mind 
that  Taylor  chose  his  subject  first  and  wrote  about  it 
afterward,  and  the  availability  of  any  particular  sub- 
ject from  the  supply  he  had  always  in  his  mind,  was 
determined  by  various  considerations  other  than  that 
need  for  expression  which  is  the  only  true  inspiration. 
The  great  poets  are  more  likely  to  name  their  verses 
after  they  are  composed,  and  to  have  the  substance  of 
thought  or  passion  before  they  cast  about  for  a  heading. 
Shelley's  "Prometheus  Unbound"  is  only  the  "Paradise 
Regained"  of  a  new  age  —  the  lyric  for  the  epic,  the 
Greek  for  the  Jewish,  the  human  for  the  Puritanic;  but 
the  idea,  the  same  Messianic  one  that  "springs  eternal  in 
the  human  breast."  Bayard  Taylor,  on  the  other  hand, 
apparently  thought  of  a  "cosmic  poem"  first  and  of  what 
he  should  say  in  it  afterward.  It  is  also  significant  that 
in  his  later  poems  he  was  so  much  given  to  symbolism. 
To  a  genius  of  the  loftiest  order,  like  Goethe,  allegory 
is  merely  a  mode  of  expression;  the  thought  is  thus 
conveyed  by  a  symbol,  but  the  thought  is  far  more  than 
the  symbol^  and  is  no  more  contained  in  it  than  an  ele- 


246  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

mental  force  is  contained  in  a  single  phenomenon.  To 
minds  of  a  lower  rank,  like  Rossetti's,  symbolization  itself 
is  a  mode  of  thinking  rather  than  of  expression;  the 
symbol  gives  rise  to  the  thought  instead  of  the  thought 
to  the  symbol.  The  instrument  of  poetry  is,  of  course, 
concrete  images  in  all  cases,  though  not  necessarily 
visual  ones;  but  to  poets  in  whom  intellectual  power  is 
preeminent,  images  are  a  language,  while  to  poets  of 
lower  rank  the  images  themselves  are  the  poetry.  Many 
a  time  in  literature  we  have  had  rhymesters  who  strung 
similes  and  metaphors,  and  thought  they  were  produc- 
ing poems:  similarly,  since  Goethe's  time,  we  have  had 
thinkers,  both  mystic  and  scientific,  who  string  symbols 
and  allegories  and  believe  they  are  composing  philosophy 
in  verse. 

It  would  be  unjust  to  say  that  Taylor  was  merely  one 
of  these  latter,  but  he  helps  us  to  understand  them. 
The  mode  of  poetic  composition  he  chose  in  "Prince 
Deucalion"  was  of  this  kind;  it  requires  the  very  highest 
intellectual  genius  to  employ  it  successfully,  and  he 
failed.  When  he  was  appointed  Minister  to  Germany 
he  was  felt  to  be  the  representative  of  our  journalists 
rather  than  of  our  literary  men,  and  the  publication  of 
"Prince  Deucalion"  shortly  afterward  confirmed  the  view. 
This  last  drama  of  his  life  is  dwelt  on  because  it  marks 
his  line  of  development,  and  was  one  of  the  mainstays 
of  his  hope  of  immortality  in  literature.  He  wrote  much 
better  poems  when  his  mind  was  not  filled  with  such 
large  ambition.  But  whether  his  fame  shall  prove  to 
be  transitory,  and  to  rest  still  on  his  muscles  and  pluck 
and  vivacity  as  when  he  was  thirty  years  old,  the  history 
of  his  later  career  is  that  of  a  very  noble  effort  to  achieve 
the  highest,  and  together  with  it  a  constant  and  toilsome 


BAYARD   TAYLOR  247 

fulfilment  of  the  duties  of  his  material  life  as  a  man 
with  bread  to  earn.  In  outliving  the  era  when  reputa- 
tions were  easily  won,  he  entered  on  a  harder  career,  and 
bore  himself  in  it  in  a  way  to  win  respect  from  his  suc- 
cessors as  largely  as  he  won  affection  from  his  con- 
temporaries. 


A  SHAKESPEAREAN  SCHOLAR 

RICHARD  GRANT  WHITE  put  his  hand  to  the  plow 
in  many  fields  of  literature,  and  in  all  he  showed  the 
sturdiness  that  denotes  yeoman  stock.  But,  apart  from 
his  special  taste  for  music,  the  most  of  his  studies  sprang 
from  his  love  of  Shakespeare.  In  the  case  of  his  theatri- 
cal and  philological  writings  this  is  obvious,  and  in  those 
which  illustrate  his  attachment  to  England  it  is  fair  to 
ascribe  no  inconsiderable  part  to  the  fondness  which, 
however  invigorated  and  broadened  by  other  traditions, 
was  primarily  due  to  the  great  dramatist  of  English  his- 
tory and  life.  Essays  upon  words,  stage-usages,  and 
matters  of  music,  observations  upon  our  cousins'  ways 
and  customs  and  modes  of  speech,  international  satire, 
and  squibs  of  all  kinds  and  lengths  made  up  a  large  part 
of  his  industrious  literary  life;  but,  for  all  that,  Shake- 
speare was  his  profession,  and  the  principal  work  of  his 
hands  was  editorial.  In  some  respects  this  choice  of 
employment  was  felicitous,  and  fell  in  with  natural  intel- 
lectual aptitudes.  He  had  a  note- taking  mind,  and  his 
memory  was  retentive  of  details  to  an  extraordinary 
degree  —  a  quality  invaluable  to  an  editor  of  texts;  and 
in  addition  to  this,  his  clear-headedness,  his  shrewd  so- 
briety, his  content  with  a  plain  and  honest-seeming  mean- 
ing, and  especially  his  contempt  for  the  palaver  of  re- 
fining analysts  of  the  German  stripe,  stood  him  in  such 
good  stead  that  he  holds  an  honorable  place  among  the 
students  who  have  made  the  critical  study  of  Shake- 

249  j 


250  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

speare  part  and  parcel  of  the  pride  of  American  scholar- 
ship. 

The  substance  of  his  attainments  is  to  be  found,  of 
course,  in  the  various  essays,  prefatory  either  to  the  gen- 
eral work  or  to  the  individual  plays  and  poems,  which 
conduce  so  much  to  the  value  of  his  version  of  Shake- 
speare in  the  way  of  expansion,  criticism,  and  informa- 
tion; and  in  these  his  views  are  set  forth  with  most 
modesty,  succinctness,  and  moderation,  and  his  knowl- 
edge is  deployed  with  most  swiftness  and  effect.  They 
form,  however,  only  a  small  portion  of  his  contributions 
to  Shakespeare  literature;  very  much  of  his  labor  in  his 
chosen  subject  was  off-hand  work,  and  must  be  sought 
in  the  magazines  to  which  he  devoted  his  less  serious 
moments.  Such  articles  —  and  their  number  is  legion  — 
usually  present  some  single  phase  of  a  Shakespeare 
theme;  and  no  matter  how  dry  and  formal  the  topic  in 
itself,  he  makes  it  entertaining.  For  it  is  a  distinction 
of  Mr.  White's  that  he  always  interests;  he  has  the  secret 
of  pleasing.  His  style  is  wonderfully  firm  and  close- 
knit;  his  facts  are  cold  as  an  iceberg  and  hard  as  a  flint; 
and  he  strews  the  mental  way  of  his  readers  with  the 
native  nuggets  of  Yankee  sense.  His  individuality 
counts  for  more  than  all.  He  was  himself  a  character, 
in  the  special  meaning  of  the  word;  one  of  those  im- 
penetrable pieces  of  nature's  workmanship  which  are 
malleable  by  no  external  influence  of  culture,  society, 
or  circumstance.  Such  persons  cannot  open  their  lips 
without  some  self-exhibition;  whether  their  solitude  is 
of  the  village  or  the  study,  they  always  speak  from  within, 
and  echo  no  man.  Mr.  White,  who  was  as  tenacious 
of  his  peculiarities  as  an  Englishman,  stamped  them 
upon  his  writings;  and  it  is  due  to  this  that  when  one 


A   SHAKESPEAREAN   SCHOLAR  251 

reads  his  words  it  is,  to  an  unusual  degree,  as  if  one 
heard  him  speaking.  When  a  man  of  this  sort  has  the 
gift  of  literary  expression,  he  will  be  a  readable  author, 
whatever  deficiencies  he  may  have;  and  this  Mr.  White 
was.  Indeed,  when  one  glances  over  the  mass  of  his 
minor  writing,  though  it  belongs  undoubtedly  to  the 
literature  that  springs  up  and  withers  in  a  day,  one  can- 
not help  wondering  at  the  brightness  of  its  short-lived 
verdancy.  There  could  hardly  seem  to  be  a  more  thank- 
less task  than  to  make  a  new  paraphrase  of  Shake- 
speare's plays.  It  is  true  that  poets,  great  and  small, 
have  tried  to  rewrite  those  dramas,  not  seeing  how  deep 
their  words  are  graved  in  the  living  rock  of  English 
speech;  but  to  tell  their  story  over  in  prose  —  no  one 
would  do  that  except  for  children.  Yet  in  the  half 
dozen  cases  in  which  Mr.  White  tried  his  hand  at  this 
mode  of  transcription,  he  made,  if  not  novelettes,  cer- 
tainly most  delightful  sketches,  which,  though  every 
incident  and  characteristic  of  them  was  familiar  to  us 
from  our  childhood,  have  the  unmistakable  and  un- 
rubbed  newness  that  belongs  to  the  magazine-mint. 
These  renovations  have  a  use,  too,  more  than  to  pass  an 
hour  of  easy  reading:  they  are  needed  to  remind  us, 
who  think  mostly  of  the  action  and  thought  of  Shake- 
speare's dramas,  how  much  the  story  counts  in  the  work, 
and  this  is  best  shown  by  relieving  it  from  its  subordi- 
nation to  character  and  treating  it  in  the  novelist's  way. 
The  "Tale  of  the  Forest  of  Arden,"  for  example,  as  it  is 
retold,  might  serve  as  a  lesson  in  romantic  fiction,  by 
revealing  how  poetry  is  of  the  essence  of  it  all,  not  a 
matter  of  expression,  but  of  structure.  The  happiness 
of  Mr.  White's  renderings  of  Shakespeare  in  prose,  how- 
ever, is  cited  only  as  a  striking  instance  of  his  power 


2 52  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

over  the  least  promising  material.  He  would  strike  a 
shower  of  wheat  out  of  thrice-threshed  straw;  or  so  it 
seems. 

Mr.  White  selected  and  revised  some  of  these  loose 
articles.  One  perceives  that  Mr.  White  possessed  a  hard- 
and-fast  intellect  of  the  sort  about  which  there  is,  in 
the  favorite  phrase,  ano  nonsense."  As  a  Shakespearean, 
he  was  himself,  in  the  bent  of  his  mind,  one  of  the 
class  of  American  readers  which  he  describes  —  "so 
large  and  so  diffused  through  society  that  it  cannot  be 
rightly  called  a  class,  who  do  not  know  that  there  are 
German  critics,  who  have  little  acquaintance  with  any 
criticism,  to  whom  Schlegel  is  unrevealed  and  Coleridge 
is  but  a  name,  and  who  yet  read  and  understand  and 
love  and  delight  in  Shakespeare,  and  who  would  quietly 
smile  at  the  notion  that  'at  last'  we  understand  Shake- 
speare because  some  learned  people  have  said  very  pro- 
found sayings  about  his  revelations  of  the  'inner  life.' ' 
His  own  appreciation  of  Shakespeare,  though  so  much 
more  informed,  was  essentially  the  same  which  belongs 
to  the  people  of  home-keeping  wits,  who  read  their  au- 
thor in  that  unenlightened  fashion  in  which  the  audiences 
of  the  Globe  listened  when  the  text  still  knew  no  re- 
cension except  that  of  the  pirates.  His  aim  as  an  editor 
was  to  restore,  so  far  as  was  possible,  the  conditions  of 
the  past;  to  place  the  reader  in  the  position  of  the 
Elizabethan  theater-goer,  and  leave  him  to  get  the  orig- 
inal entertainment  which  Shakespeare  had  in  mind  when 
he  wrote.  Shakespeare  meant  to  amuse,  and  in  our  times 
it  was  the  part  of  a  loyal  adherent  of  the  master  to  help 
him  in  his  old  purpose.  To  such  a  view  metaphysics, 
however  acute,  was  out  of  place  in  Shakespeare's  de- 
mesne; was  a  perversion  of  poetry,  like  the  science  which 


A   SHAKESPEAREAN   SCHOLAR  253 

botanizes  upon  a  mother's  grave.  No  words  were  too 
sharp,  no  denunciations  too  heavy,  in  Mr.  White's 
opinion,  for  the  flagellation  of  that  school  which  is  no 
longer  confined  to  German  lecture-rooms,  but  now  in  all 
quarters  of  criticism  makes  of  Shakespeare  a  problem 
instead  of  a  poem. 

Perhaps  in  this  onslaught  Mr.  White  might  have 
gained  by  discriminating.  The  fact  is  that  the  dramas 
do  afford  a  field  for  such  philosophizing,  whether  rightly 
or  wrongly.  It  may  have  been  unknown  to  Shakespeare, 
but  he  did  write  a  text-book  of  human  life.  By  the 
force  of  his  genius  he  represented  mankind,  on  its  social 
and  spiritual  side,  with  the  reality  of  nature.  It  is  the 
excellence  of  his  creative  art  that  his  characters  live,  and 
show  their  souls  not  wholly  but  by  glimpses,  as  common 
mortals  do;  and  thus  Hamlet,  for  example,  presents  to 
us  the  puzzle  that  any  highly  organized  man  affords  to  a 
thoughtful  observer,  and  allows  of  countless  theories  in 
regard  to  his  personality  and  motives.  All  life  is  to  the 
thinker  fair  game  for  his  meditation,  and  in  it  the 
universal  spiritual  laws  are  to  be  discerned,  or  guessed 
at,  or  speculated  about.  It  would  be  foolish  to  object 
to  any  amount  of  philosophizing  on  the  real  phenomena 
of  character;  and  if  Shakespeare  has  given  us  the  micro- 
cosmos  of  man,  if  the  reality  of  his  imagination  is  not 
less  truthful  than  that  of  actual  experience,  why  should 
not  Germans  or  Englishmen  use  it,  the  more  readily  be- 
cause it  is  a  common  possession,  and  not,  like  ordinary 
instances,  known  only  to  the  few  who  happen  to  be 
spectators?  Mr.  White  was  wrong,  if  he  found  fault 
with  the  Shakespeare  philosophers,  or  denied  their  posi- 
tions, simply  because  they  occupied  themselves  with 
material  not  originally  written  for  such  an  investigation; 


254  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

and  if  he  was  right  at  all,  it  was  only  in  maintaining  that 
Shakespeare  knew  nothing  of  this  value  of  his  work, 
and  cared  nothing  for  it.  Of  course  there  has  been 
much  error  and  feebleness  and  trash  written  by  the  mem- 
bers of  this  critical  school,  as  is  done  by  incompetence 
in  all  departments;  but  there  has  been  also  some  wisdom, 
and  it  would  be  gratuitous,  if  not  dangerous,  to  affirm 
Shakespeare's  ignorance  of  the  worth  of  his  work  for 
instruction.  One  cannot  safely  set  limits  to  the  knowl- 
edge that  any  great  author  has  of  the  various  meanings 
which  his  lines  may  convey,  even  if  he  does  not,  like 
Dante,  definitely  declare  that  he  has  expressed  a  mani- 
fold meaning  in  the  same  identical  words.  Wisdom  as 
well  as  wit  often  lodges  in  the  ears  that  hear  it  as  much 
as  on  the  lips  that  speak  it,  and  its  application  to  special 
circumstances  frequently  discovers  hidden  truth  in  the 
worn  words.  How  many  meanings,  for  example,  have 
Virgil's  lines  disclosed  to  those  who  for  centuries  have 
consulted  the  Sortes  Virgiliance!  It  would  be  as  foolish 
to  credit  Virgil  with  these  as  with  the  famous  Messianic 
prophecy  in  his  eclogue.  The  case  illustrates  how  inno- 
cent Shakespeare  was  of  a  good  part  of  the  exegesis  forced 
upon  him  by  his  editors.  At  the  same  time  it  is  not 
likely  that  they  have  so  exceeded  the  great  master  in 
wisdom  that  he  would  be  surprised  to  find  that  they 
make  of  him  an  understanding  author  as  well  as  a  success- 
ful playwright. 

The  weight  of  Mr.  White's  objurgation,  however,  falls 
less  upon  those  who  comment  upon  the  text  and  the  gen- 
eral conception  of  the  plays  than  upon  those  who  reason 
therefrom  to  the  dramatist's  life  and  development.  He 
himself  allows  the  existence  of  periods  of  literary  art  in 
his  author,  but  in  "spiritual  stages"  he  is  almost  a  total 


A   SHAKESPEAREAN    SCHOLAR  255 

disbeliever.  But  here,  too,  one  must  discriminate,  and 
in  much  the  same  way  as  before.  A  man  grows,  but  his 
growth  is  largely  unconscious.  The  craze  to  find  an 
"evolution"  in  all  things  could  not  pass  by  the  prime 
phenomena  of  genius;  and  so  Shakespeare  has  been  fur- 
nished with  one.  The  mistake  is  in  giving  too  firm  lines 
to  the  progress  of  his  mind  and  art.  Neither  the  meta- 
physical nor  the  literary  yard-stick  can  be  applied  to 
the  "myriad-minded"  one  with  any  but  a  ludicrous  result; 
and  the  scholar  who  would  build  up  Shakespeare's  life 
in  the  easy-going  fashion  of  distinct  and  successive 
periods  is  over-confident.  The  unfolding  of  his  special 
gift  of  expression,  the  apprenticeship  and  the  mastery 
of  art,  may  be  distinguished,  from  the  first  smooth-sliding 
lines  to  the  volcanic  fusion  of  intractable  speech  in  the 
language  of  "Cymbeline."  So  may  a  similar  thing  be  ob- 
served in  Browning,  or  Carlyle,  or  Tennyson  —  the  mere 
hand-cunning.  And  in  Shakespeare's  temper  of  mind  a 
change  may  be  observed,  plainly  enough,  in  the  succes- 
sive plays,  not  taken  individually,  but  in  their  totality. 
It  is  the  same,  essentially,  which  the  great  poets  exhibit 
in  passing  from  youth  to  age;  so  pathetic  in  Virgil,  so 
deadly  earnest  in  Dante,  so  exalted  in  Milton,  so  wise  in 
Shakespeare.  But  to  go  further  than  this,  and  recon- 
struct the  inner  life  of  these  men,  and  especially  of  him 
whose  gift  of  taciturnity  outrivaled  nature's  secrecy,  is 
another  matter;  and  for  those  who  do  this,  and  would 
seem  to  know  Shakespeare  better  than  he  knew  himself, 
any  one  with  knowledge  of  the  inner  life  must  have  the 
kind  of  pity  that  is  akin  to  contempt.  Mr.  White  had 
for  them  unlimited  scorn,  and  poured  it  forth  unceasingly 
and  unsparingly.  Those  men  who  assume  to  know  the 
unsearchable  soul  of  genius,  and  those  who  seek  to  dress 


256  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

the  writer  of  pleasant  comedies  and  tragical  histories 
as  an  want-courier  of  Hegelianism,  were  foes  to  be  put 
to  flight  with  all  his  critical  weapons  if  he  could  compass 
it.  He  was  a  partisan  in  the  conflict,  but  even  when 
going  to  great  lengths  he  did  good  work.  To  free  Shake- 
speare from  his  commentators  is  more  of  a  gain  than  a 
loss,  for,  generally  speaking,  they  are  of  the  sort  that 
darkens  counsel.  It  is  possible  to  look  upon  their  ex- 
planations of  the  doctrines  of  life  as  unfolded  in  Shake- 
speare's plays,  and  even  upon  their  efforts  to  reduce  his 
own  genius  to  the  familiarity  of  Rousseau-like  autobiog- 
raphy, with  a  most  tolerant  spirit;  but  blessed  is  he  who 
finds  Shakespeare,  though  he  loses  them! 

But  did  Mr.  White  find  Shakespeare?  Did  he  suc- 
ceed any  better  than  the  victims  of  his  own  censure  in 
forming  an  ideal  Shakespeare  out  of  the  materials  at 
hand  on  the  "no  nonsense"  theory?  What  was  his  concep- 
tion of  the  man?  He  lost  no  opportunity  of  insist- 
ing that  the  genius  we  idolize  was  a  popular  London 
playwright,  whose  aim  was  immediately  to  please  the 
spectators  and  thereby  get  money.  If  he  wrote  a  good 
acting  play  that  would  draw  an  audience  and  increase 
the  stock  dividends  of  the  managers,  he  had  achieved 
his  whole  purpose.  In  this  was  included  his  entire  notion 
of  the  use  of  the  divine  art  and  of  his  own  life.  This  is 
the  substance  of  Mr.  White's  teaching,  reiterated  almost 
to  weariness.  The  theory  falls  in  with  the  common  idea 
that  Shakespeare  was  a  kind  of  Nature's  foundling,  to 
whom  benevolent  fairies  had  given  the  great  gifts  of 
wisdom,  beauty,  and  fortune  as  carelessly  as  if  they 
were  shining  pebbles,  just  as  fairies  used  to  do  in  the 
old  story-books.  A  few  surface  facts,  principal  among 
them  the  omission  to  edit  and  publish  his  complete  works, 


A   SHAKESPEAREAN    SCHOLAR  257, 

* 

give  support  to  the  presumed  indifference  to  fame  or 
ignorance  of  the  transcendent  worth  of  his  creations  on 
Shakespeare's  part,  which  is  involved  in  the  position. 
There  are  ready  explanations  of  the  facts  referred  to, 
such  as  the  nature  of  theatrical  property  in  those  days, 
and  the  desirability  of  not  publishing  the  plays  in  order 
to  monopolize  their  acting  by  his  own  company.  Giving 
due  weight  to  all  that  Mr.  White  urges,  it  seems  to  us 
that  it  has  been  as  dangerous  for  him  to  stop  at  the  sur- 
face of  Shakespeare's  life  as  it  was  for  the  anatomists  to 
probe  the  center.  In  attending  to  his  characterization 
of  the  man  as  a  money-getter,  one  is  reminded  of  the 
ancient  science  that  discovered  in  humanity  a  threefold 
soul,  and  one  thinks  that  Mr.  White  may  have  found 
one  of  these  in  Shakespeare's  case,  and  has  forgotten  to 
look  for  the  other  two.  In  fact,  it  must  be  confessed 
that  the  editor  has  sometimes  shown  a  weakness  of 
poetic  apprehension  —  that  his  Shakespeare  is  rather  an 
observer  of  life  than  a  poet.  This  comes  out  strikingly 
in  his  statement,  for  example,  that  Shakespeare  most 
withdraws  the  veil  from  his  own  personality  in  "Troilus 
and  Cressida,"  and  in  the  character  of  Ulysses  give  ex- 
pression to  his  own  views  of  life.  This  drama  is  indeed 
packed  with  noble  phrases  and  fine  wisdom,  but  if  one 
were  to  seek  for  Shakespeare  in  it,  it  would  better  be  in 
the  impatience,  the  undisguised  contempt,  that  the  au- 
thor shows  for  these  wars  about  the  Grecian  jade;  nor  is 
there  more  reason  to  ascribe  any  special  earnestness  or 
directness  to  the  words  of  me  dialogue  than  in  the  case 
of  any  other  of  the  dramas  that  allow  frequent  oppor- 
tunity for  the  utterance  of  universal  truths  in  respect 
to  man's  nature  or  life.  Mr.  White's  use  of  the  play  is 
merely  to  emphasize  his  notion  that  Shakespeare  was  a 


258  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

man  of  the  world  exclusively,  or  at  least  primarily.  This 
is  a  cardinal  trait  of  the  editor's  Shakespeareanism. 
There  is  little  need  for  argument.  The  many  phrases 
of  the  sonnets  which  prophesy  immortality  for  the  verse 
are  not  to  be  set  aside  as  merely  customary  at  the 
time,  or  as  applicable  only  to  the  more  pretentious  work 
(as  Mr.  White  thinks)  of  the  poet  as  distinct  from  the 
dramatist;  they  have  the  ring  of  sincerity  too  clear  for 
that,  the  stamp  of  the  mens  conscia  virtutis  which  con- 
verts a  boast  into  the  just  superscription  of  Caesar.  But 
apart  from  all  these  minor  matters  of  evidence,  the 
world  will  never  believe  that  the  man  who  knew  human 
life  more  widely  and  profoundly  than  any  other  mere 
mortal  that  ever  wrote  was  ignorant  only  of  himself; 
or  that,  with  such  acquaintance  with  the  noble  and  ideal 
ends  of  life,  he  contented  himself  with  that  one  of 
avarice  or  of  getting  on  in  the  world  which  is  held  to 
be  among  the  meanest  and  most  paltry,  and  which  is 
usually  debasing  to  the  higher  faculties.  Had  he  been 
so  furnished  with  insight,  imagination,  and  ideality  as 
he  was,  so  complete  in  earthly  wisdom  and  so  appre- 
hensive of  the  excellence  of  human  virtue,  and  had  he, 
notwithstanding,  declined  to  the  level  of  those  who  care 
for  their  gifts  and  works  only  as  means  of  merchandise, 
he  would  have  been  a  monstrosity  so  strange  that  nature 
could  scarce  contain  his  deformities.  This  is  instinc- 
tively felt  by  those  whose  thoughts  keep  proportion.  In 
this  matter  Mr.  White  exhibited  most  plainly  the  limita- 
tion of  his  mind.  The  truth  which  gives  any  color 
to  his  characterization  of  Shakespeare  may  easily  be 
granted,  as  that  he  was  always  mindful  of  his  audience's 
taste,  of  stage  traditions,  of  the  actual  conditions  under 
which  he  practised  his  art,  and  that  he  made  money 


A   SHAKESPEAREAN    SCHOLAR  259 

by  his  work  and  was  glad  to  have  it,  and  that  he  valued 
social  rank  and  position.  The  error  lies  in  affirming 
that  this  is  the  whole  story;  in  ignoring  the  poetic  nature, 
the  most  self-conscious  of  all  the  varieties  of  tempera- 
ment; and  in  passing  by  all  that  indicates  Shakespeare's 
regard  for  his  art,  even  in  the  chance  ways  possible,  such 
as  his  repeated  criticism  on  the  abuses  of  the  stage  and 
his  great  reform  in  the  disposition  made  of  the  Fool. 
In  these  last  it  was  not  the  theatrical  manager,  but  the 
outraged  poet,  who  spoke;  his  impatient  contempt  for 
the  laughter  of  the  pit  and  the  rant  of  the  stage,  though 
he  yielded  to  them  as  much  as  was  needful,  is  the  ob- 
verse of  his  love  for  his  art  and  the  value  he  set  upon 
it.  But  these  hints  in  regard  to  the  qualities  involved 
in  the  mere  existence  of  such  creative  genius,  and  ex- 
pressly shown  in  random  flashes  of  his  work,  are  almost 
superfluous.  Because  Shakespeare  submitted  in  his  art 
and  worldly  life  to  the  conditions  imposed  on  him  by 
fortune,  and  made  that  submission  the  most  marvelous 
triumph  of  all  literature,  is  not  a  reason  for  affirming 
that  he  gave  his  assent  to  these  conditions;  and  unless  he 
did  so  with  all  his  soul,  the  theory  that  he  cared  for 
nothing  except  to  get  rich  by  catering  to  the  apprentices 
must  fall  to  the  ground.  We  must  stop  this  side  of 
Mr.  White's  furthest  mark,  therefore,  and  admit  only 
that  Shakespeare  had  the  wisdom,  as  a  literary  work- 
man, to  take  the  times  as  he  found  them  and  reduce  them 
to  the  purposes  of  great  art;  and  that,  Heaven  be  thanked, 
he  was  paid  for  his  laborious  industry,  and  left  money 
to  pay  his  debts  and  provide  for  his  children. 

To  parody  the  literary  proverb,  one  might  say  that 
the  defects  of  Mr.  White's  Shakespeareanism  produced 
its  qualities.  In  a  field  so  large  and  various,  it  may  be  a 


260  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

working  advantage  to  have  limitations  of  outlook  and 
effort,  and  to  take  short  views.  The  editor  who  has  once 
satisfied  himself,  as  did  Mr.  White,  that  to  build  spiritual 
biography  was  foolishness  and  to  philosophize  about 
the  inner  life  was  futile  has  greatly  simplified  his  task; 
and  if  to  this  he  adds  the  positive  idea  that  Shake- 
speare's vision  was  bounded  by  the  circuit  of  the  London 
theater,  he  may  well  rest  contented  with  the  aim  of 
merely  restoring  the  past  conditions,  and  so  providing 
his  readers  with  notes  that  they  can  mingle  with  the 
crowd  at  the  Globe  as  with  contemporaries.  Within 
these  self-imposed  bounds  the  gifts  of  Mr.  White  were 
put  to  admirable  use.  In  the  mere  matter  of  the  vo- 
cabulary, in  elucidating  or  restoring  meanings  to  words, 
he  was  a  well-informed  and  trustworthy  guide;  and  how 
large  a  portion  of  his  study  was  philological  does  not 
need  to  be  pointed  out.  Perhaps  a  more  important,  be- 
cause rarer,  service  was  his  reconstruction  of  the  orig- 
inal acting,  the  mise-en-scene,  in  which  his  knowledge  of 
the  stage  was  an  efficient  aid  to  his  scholarship  and  in- 
sight. He  laments  the  break  in  the  theatrical  tradition 
occasioned  by  the  closing  of  the  theaters  under  the  Com- 
monwealth, because  it  probably  deprived  us  of  Shake- 
speare's own  conception  of  how  the  characters  should  be 
represented;  but  his  essays  upon  the  acting  of  Rosalind 
and  of  lago,  for  example,  do  more  to  set  the  Elizabethan 
interpretation  of  the  plays  before  us  than  anything  else 
with  which  we  are  acquainted.  In  fact,  Mr.  White's  fre- 
quent criticism  on  modern  impersonations  of  Shake- 
speare's characters,  by  showing  how  far  removed  they 
are  from  the  author's  intention,  makes  a  part  of  his  most 
instructive  writings. 
Besides  the  linguistic  and  the  theatrical  strands  in 


A   SHAKESPEAREAN   SCHOLAR  261 

the  more  valuable  portion  of  his  work,  something  is  to 
be  said  for  the  critical  element  in  the  department  of 
characterization.  It  was  here  that  the  editor  was  strong- 
est. The  conception  of  lago  which  he  develops  is  as 
finely  reasoned  an  essay  as  can  be  found  in  the  field, 
and  his  restoration  of  Jaques  from  a  melodramatic  fool 
into  his  original  sour  cynicism  is  a  piece  of  retributive 
justice  too  long  delayed.  One  has  a  special  gratitude 
for  his  penetration  into  the  noble  nature  of  Cassio,  who 
has  met  with  little  understanding  hitherto,  and  for  the 
clear  and  sympathetic  discovery  of  it  to  his  readers.  It 
is  when  Mr.  White  applies  himself  to  these  subjects  that 
he  shows  the  most  valuable  individual  qualities,  and 
merits  honor.  They  belong,  however,  to  the  detailed 
rather  than  the  general  criticism  of  Shakespeare.  In 
scholarship  he  was,  perhaps,  lacking  in  breadth,  and  in 
more  than  one  instance,  as  in  his  discussion  of  the  text 
of  the  two  quartos  of  "Hamlet,"  he  argues  beside  the 
point  in  dispute.  Notwithstanding  these  things,  the  real 
value  of  Mr.  White's  Shakespeareanism  is  not  impaired. 
The  literary  form  and  charm  of  his  style,  the  hard- 
headedness  of  his  mind,  the  practical  sense  he  always 
displays,  make  his  work,  within  the  limitations  which 
he  himself  assigned  it,  of  great  positive  utility;  and  the 
sturdiness  with  which  he  stood  for  common  sense,  in 
opposition  to  the  eulogistic  gush  with  which  Shakespeare, 
in  common  with  all  the  greatest  poets,  is  overwhelmed, 
is  something  to  be  very  grateful  for.  He  had  his  pet 
notions,  as  who  has  not?  and  he  was  a  hard  hitter  — 
"Let  the  galled  jade  wince!"  But  he  spent  his  life  with 
his  favorite  author,  and  made  of  him  his  liberal  educa- 
cation;  would  that  the  universities  afforded  so  good  a  one! 
His  labor  was  one  of  love,  and  it  has  the  value  and  respect 


262  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

of  the  best  work  a  man  can  do,  being  deficient  only 
where  Nature  herself  had  denied  faculty,  in  this  case  on 
the  poetic  side.  He  has  gone  over  to  the  shelves  of  the 
"great  majority"  of  acknowledged  commentators,  be- 
neath the  Stratford  bust,  and  with  him  go  the  plaudits 
of  true  lovers  of  Shakespeare  for  such  lifelong  and  honest 
service  to  the  god  of  our  literary  idolatry. 

It  is  but  just  to  add  a  few  words  of  acknowledgment 
for  the  vigor  and  brightness  shown  by  Mr.  White  in  his 
work  in  other  fields.  His  versatility,  information,  and 
industry  were  very  great.  He  was  essentially  a  littera- 
teur rather  than  an  author.  The  keen  observant  power 
of  his  view  of  English  life  and  manners  was  really  marvel- 
ous, when  one  considers  his  comparatively  short  resi- 
dence—  or  more  properly  speaking,  vacation  —  in  the 
mother  country;  and  his  knowledge  of  England,  as  shown 
in  other  volumes  than  those  of  travel,  appears  as  inti- 
mate as  a  native's  He  possessed,  beside  this  ready 
apprehension  of  facts  and  insight  into  human  nature, 
some  of  the  qualities  of  the  transplanted  stock  from  which 
he  sprang,  and  showed  them  in  the  patience  and  frugal 
independence  of  a  self-respecting  life,  which  may  well 
serve  as  a  lesson  in  simplicity  and  dignity  to  the  rapidly 
increasing  class  of  writers  who  make  minor  literature 
their  profession.  The  lack  of  tolerance  which  he  some- 
times exhibited  was  not  that  of  an  unamiable  but  of  a 
strong  nature;  and  the  insistence  on  some  opinions  which 
he  seems  to  have  regarded  as  his  private  property  was 
the  common  foible  of  students.  On  the  other  hand, 
genuine  heartiness  and  an  inbred  courtesy  may  be  easily 
discerned  beneath  his  literary  exterior. 


COLONIAL  BOOKS 

THE  first  three  volumes  of  Stedman's  "Library  of 
American  Literature"  cover  the  colonial  and  revolutionary 
times  down  to  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution.  It  may 
seem  surprising  that  three  large  quarto  volumes  were 
required  to  hold  what  is  worth  preservation  in  a  period 
usually  regarded  as  barren,  in  a  literary  sense;  but 
the  editors  interpreted  the  term  "literature"  in  a  liberal 
way,  and  meant  to  present  in  this  collection  a  view  of 
the  intellectual  life  in  the  colonies,  and  later  in  the  States 
of  the  Union,  without  too  strict  a  regard  to  that  quality 
of  form  and  style  which  makes  literature  classic.  The 
colonial  writings  are  for  the  most  part  interesting  on 
historical  grounds:  they  consist  of  chronicles,  diaries  of 
adventure,  and  all  kinds  of  sermonizing;  and  undoubt- 
edly, as  a  whole,  they  are  very  tedious,  more  fit  for  the 
leisure  of  our  state  historical  societies  in  their  proceed- 
ings than  for  general  reading.  The  impression  that  there 
is  so  little  of  real  value  in  the  colonial  literature  that  it 
is  not  worth  while  to  search  for  it  is  widespread;  and 
in  a  certain  sense  this  is  true.  In  those  days  literature 
was  not  practiced  as  a  fine  art  in  this  country.  The 
books  that  were  written,  however,  came  very  near  to  the 
real  life  of  the  people,  reflected  their  thoughts  and  their 
doings  with  truthfulness,  if  not  with  beauty,  and  consti- 
tute the  record  of  the  settlement.  Literature  was  at  all 
events  a  practical  art.  There  was  as  much  life  in  ser- 
mons then  as  there  is  in  newspapers  now;  and  in  the 

263 


264  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

tragedies  of  the  wilderness,  in  shipwreck,  Indian  battle, 
and  pirate-hunting,  in  Quakerism  and  witchcraft,  there 
was  that  union  of  romance  and  reality  which  gives  to 
history  the  liveliness  of  fiction.  One  who  is  unacquainted 
with  the  stores  of  our  historical  societies  would  turn  these 
pages  with  surprise  at  their  riches.  The  first  volume 
is  the  American  Hakluyt.  Here  is  a  chapter  out  of 
that  voyaging  which  was  opening  the  whole  western 
world,  and  to  us  the  most  interesting  of  all  because  it 
contains  the  adventures  of  the  American  coast;  it  is 
read,  too,  as  it  came  from  the  lips  of  the  men  who  were 
themselves  chief  actors  in  the  scene,  direct  in  speech 
as  they  were  sturdy  in  deed.  There  is  no  art  in  the 
saying  of  their  words,  but  the  pulse  of  the  action  is  still 
to  be  felt  in  their  narratives;  the  story  is  yet  warm  with 
memory  of  joys  and  sorrows,  the  ipsissima  verba  of  cast- 
aways rescued  against  hope.  One  who  would  obtain 
a  vivid  impression  of  what  planting  the  wilderness  was 
could  not  do  better  than  read  these  pages,  in  which  ad- 
mirable selection  has  brought  together  the  best  of  these 
living  narratives;  and  as  he  continues,  he  will  find  the 
entire  life  of  the  colonies,  their  hopes,  beliefs,  and  cus- 
toms, their  perils  and  their  deliverances,  opening  under 
his  view.  The  collection  in  the  first  three  volumes  is  an 
illustration,  better  than  any  history,  of  the  first  hundred 
and  fifty  years  of  English  life  on  this  continent. 

A  considerable  part  of  the  material  is  necessarily 
familiar,  inasmuch  as  the  more  important  events  in  his- 
tory and  the  more  striking  incidents  in  personal  adven- 
ture are  natural  subjects  for  editorial  selection;  but  these 
are  told  from  the  original  sources.  It  is  unavoidable, 
too,  that  the  colonies  of  Virginia  and  of  New  England, 
especially  the  latter,  should  occupy  a  disproportionate 


COLONIAL   BOOKS  265 

place,  because  their  inhabitants  left  more  written  records 
of  themselves  and  came  more  into  the  ken  of  travelers. 
Intellectual  life  was  more  vigorous  among  the  Puritans 
of  the  Bay  than  elsewhere,  and  the  whole  social  system 
felt  its  stimulus.  From  the  other  parts  of  the  country 
comes  little  else  than  descriptions  of  places,  anecdotes 
of  warfare,  and  a  few  characterizations  of  men,  together 
with  the  famous  shipwreck  of  Sir  Thomas  Gates  off  the 
Bermudas,  and  the  dolorous  narrative  of  Colonel  Nor- 
wood's voyage  and  sufferings  in  Virginia,  which  is  as 
fine  a  story  of  adventure  as  the  chronicles  contain,  and 
is  told  in  a  manner  to  delight  Kingsley  or  Thackeray. 
One  gets  also,  a  glimpse  of  the  Southern  pirates,  but 
no  more.  Similarly,  the  collection  affords  only  a  slight 
account  of  New  York,  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  trading 
village,  and  a  glance  at  its  city  politics,  disturbed  even 
at  that  early  day.  It  is  New  England  that  furnishes 
the  bulk  of  the  matter  which  has  come  down  to  us,  from 
the  internal  troubles  of  the  Leyden  church,  the  landing 
at  Plymouth,  the  coming  of  Endicott,  Morton  of  Merry- 
mount,  the  hiding  of  the  king's  judges,  down  through 
Quakerism  and  witchcraft,  French  and  Indian  wars,  to 
the  defiance  of  Adams  and  Otis.  This  was  a  most  inter- 
esting period,  with  changes  and  incidents  in  plenty, 
with  solid  characters  for  counsel  and  action,  and  with 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  communities  of  the  world 
to  mold  and  develop.  The  editor's  skill  in  so  choosing 
extracts  from  the  mass  of  forgotten  writings  as  to  place 
before  us  the  traits  of  the  people  is  a  very  fortunate  gift. 
It  is  especially  matter  for  congratulation  that  he  has 
taken  from  the  ecclesiastical  record  so  many  character- 
izations of  the  leading  Puritan  ministers,  such  as  Hooker, 
Shepard,  Cotton,  Eliot,  the  Mathers,  and  also  of  some 


266  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

of  their  wives.  Of  the  theology  of  the  time,  he  gives 
no  more  of  the  blazing  kind  than  is  needful  to  a  full 
idea  of  the  sermons  of  the  divines,  while  of  other  extracts 
there  are  enough  to  show  that  if  the  people  thought 
much  upon  the  wrath  to  come,  they  also  sought  pious 
and  godly  living.  Perhaps  the  most  curious  theological 
examples  are  the  denunciations  launched  by  the  Quakers 
at  Endicott  and  his  fellows,  in  the  style  of  the  Hebrew 
prophets:  "Woe,  woe  to  thee,  thou  bloody  town  of  Boston, 
and  the  rest  that  are  confederate  with  thee,  and  it  thou 
canst  not  escape  —  thou  who  hast  shed  the  blood  of  the 
innocent  people  called  Quakers,  and  imprisoned  and 
fined  them,  and  taken  away  their  goods,  and  they  have 
become  a  prey  unto  thee,  for  thee  to  exercise  thy  cruelty 
upon  them;  and  thou  boasts  in  thy  wickedness,  and 
'thinks  thou  dost  God  good  service  to  brand  and  put 
to  death'  the  people  called  Quakers.  Verily  this  is  the 
thoughts  and  intents  of  the  hearts  of  many  of  you  in 
New  England;  but  especially  within  thee,  and  within  thy 
jurisdiction  that  belongs  to  thee,  O  thou  town  of  Boston!" 
Of  this  kind  of  jeremiad  there  is  a  considerable  amount, 
but  the  extract  is  interesting  as  an  example  of  that  com- 
mand of  Biblical  style  to  which  much  of  the  earlier 
volumes  owe  what  literary  merit  they  contain.  The 
Scripture,  from  the  time  that  the  Bible  was  a  new  book 
in  England,  was  almost  an  English  dialect;  and  in  these 
divines  of  New  England  one  sees  how  invigorating  it  was. 
Undoubtedly  it  encouraged  the  exhortatory  style  of 
harangue,  but  it  gave  force  to  the  utterance  of  the  mind, 
and  from  a  literary  point  of  view  great  influence  is  to  be 
ascribed  to  it.  Wherever  the  style  rises  and  becomes 
fervid,  one  easily  perceives  the  study  of  the  Bible;  intel- 
lectual passion,  high  feeling  of  all  kinds,  took  on  this 


COLONIAL   BOOKS  267 

Scriptural  expression;  it  was  the  poetry,  the  highest  form 
of  impassioned  speech,  of  the  period.  Even  in  descrip- 
tions one  sees  its  dominating  influence.  It  is  not  the 
mosaic  of  Biblical  words  that  is  referred  to,  but  the 
very  spirit  of  the  orator  who  pours  them  forth.  Here  is 
an  admirable  instance  of  the  manner  of  it;  and  a  more 
vigorous  picture  of  battle,  one  more  abundant  in  the 
ancient  English  force,  could  hardly  be  found.  It  is  from 
the  pen  of  William  Hooke. 

"Here  ride  some  dead  men  s wagging  in  their  deep 
saddles;  there  fall  others  alive  upon  their  dead  horses; 
death  sends  a  message  to  those  from  the  mouth  of  the 
muskets;  these  it  talks  with  face  to  face,  and  stabs 
them  in  the  fifth  rib.  In  yonder  file  there  is  a  man 
hath  his  arms  struck  off  from  his  shoulder,  another  by 
him  hath  lost  his  leg;  here  stands  a  soldier  with  half  a 
face,  there  fights  another  upon  his  stumps,  and  at  once 
both  kills  and  is  killed;  not  far  off  lies  a  company  wal- 
lowing in  their  sweat  and  gore;  such  a  man  whilst  he 
chargeth  his  musket  is  discharged  of  his  life,  and  falls 
upon  his  dead  fellow.  Every  battle  of  the  warrior  is 
with  confused  noise  and  garments  rolled  in  blood.  Death 
reigns  in  the  field,  and  is  sure  to  have  the  day,  which 
side  soever  falls.  In  the  mean  while  (O  formidable!) 
the  infernal  fiends  follow  the  camp  to  catch  after  the 
souls  of  rude  nefarious  soldiers  (such  as  are  commonly 
men  of  that  calling),  who  fight  themselves  fearlessly  into 
the  mouth  of  hell  for  revenge,  a  booty,  or  a  little  revenue. 
How  thick  and  threefold  do  they  speed  one  another  to 
destruction!  A  day  of  battle  is  a  day  of  harvest  for 
the  devil." 

Such  an  extract  is  sufficient  to  show  that  these  pages 
are  not  without  masterly  style.  It  is  interesting  to  ob- 


268  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

serve,  too,  in  these  theological  portions  the  efforts  of 
the  imaginative  faculties  of  the  mind  to  make  themselves 
felt,  in  parable  and  fancied  dialogue,  and  here  and  there 
one  comes  on  that  not  unfrequent  union  of  the  actor  and 
the  preacher  which  was  offensive  to  the  usually  grave 
and  serious  ways  of  the  Puritan  pulpit.  There  was  one 
preacher  who  enacted  Christ's  agony  and  impersonated 
God  dropping  sinners  into  the  pit.  Perhaps  long  dis- 
courses encouraged  such  sporadic  attempts  at  variety. 

Outside  of  this  infusion  of  the  noble  language  of 
Scripture  into  style,  there  is  little  for  the  literary  critic 
to  notice.  In  the  minds  of  the  writers  one  perceives 
no  great  distinction,  no  remarkable  individual  gifts.  It 
is  plain  that  piety  and  strength  of  character  must  have 
sustained  intellectual  power  in  these  leaders  of  the  com- 
munity. Jonathan  Edwards  was  the  sole  example  of  a 
mind  of  the  first  order  in  the  colonies,  and  his  meta- 
physical analysis  and  closeness  of  logic  stand  by  them- 
selves, apart  from  all  else  in  the  collection;  for  though 
Bishop  Berkeley  is  included  as  a  contributor  to  Ameri- 
can literature,  and  some  pages  of  Berkeleyism  are 
interpolated,  the  mind  refuses  to  regard  him  as  other 
than  an  Englishman  of  the  mother  country.  John 
Norton,  also,  occupies  a  solitary  niche,  with  his  style 
deeply  imbued  with  classical  example  and  studded  with 
the  names  and  maxims  of  the  ancients.  He  alone  shows 
the  powerful  influence  of  the  old  collegiate  learning; 
nor  did  he  emulate  the  example  of  Cotton,  whom  he 
eulogizes  as  "savoring  more  of  the  cross  of  Christ  than 
of  human  learning."  In  him  alone  are  those  mingled 
strains  of  pagan  learning  and  Puritanism  which  were  most 
happily  blended  in  Milton.  The  other  noted  ministers 
of  the  early  colonists  have  a  family  resemblance,  and 


COLONIAL   BOOKS  269 

their  memory,  as  here  shown,  exemplifies  the  common 
ideal  of  the  "godly  men"  who  planted  the  church  in  the 
new  soil. 

In  the  broad  view  which  such  a  collection  as  this 
gives,  one  trait  in  the  public  spirit  of  the  colonists  stands 
out  prominently  with  equal  eminence  in  both  the  lay  and 
clerical  authors,  in  New  England  and  in  Virginia.  There 
were  carpers,  of  course,  restless  spirits,  adventurers  of 
all  sorts,  who  had  fault  to  find,  who  felt  irked  by  re- 
straint, and  would  have  produced  some  Gonzalo's  com- 
monwealth. But,  commonly  speaking,  they  looked  upon 
this  country,  this  wilderness  as  they  called  it,  as  a  para- 
dise, a  land  of  promise  and  plenty,  where  the  poor  people 
of  the  Old  World  could  begin  life  anew.  The  terms  in 
which  they  describe  the  fertility  of  the  land,  the  ex- 
cellence of  the  climate,  the  speed  with  which  comfort 
was  obtained,  all  the  advantages  of  material  prosperity, 
are  identical  with  those  now  associated  in  our  minds 
with  the  new  West.  Kansas  and  Nebraska  were  not 
praised  more  in  their  day,  nor  was  the  opportunity  the 
West  offers  for  the  poor  to  build  homes  of  plenty  more 
persistently  and  glowingly  put  forth  than  is  the  lot  of 
the  planter  and  the  colonist  subject  for  congratulation 
in  many  of  these  extracts.  It  is  true  there  were  Indians, 
but,  generally  speaking,  the  Indians  were  kind  friends  to 
the  first  comers;  there  were  shipwrecks,  such  as  that 
marvelous  one  of  Thacher  and  Avery  on  their  August 
voyage  from  Ipswich  to  Marblehead,  which  gave  the 
name  to  Thacher 's  Island,  but  such  perils  were  excep- 
tional. The  well-being  of  the  people  at  large  was  greater 
than  in  the  mother  country;  they  were  full  of  hope  and 
energy,  and  rapidly  developed  that  versatility  in  ex- 
pedients and  keenness  in  acquiring  wealth  which  were  to 


270  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

be  the  great  traits  of  their  descendants.  They  prized, 
too,  from  an  early  date,  their  liberties.  These  were 
never  left  unmentioned  in  the  enumeration  of  their 
blessings.  Nor  was  it  many  years  before  they  were 
proud  of  their  achievements,  like  a  Western  community; 
only  that  they  were  more  prone  to  see  the  hand  of  God 
in  it,  and  to  look  on  themselves  as  God's  people,  of  whom 
he  had  a  special  care.  This  was  true  more  particularly 
of  New  England.  The  heresies  that  arose  among  them 
are  a  proof  of  the  free  action  of  their  minds.  The  perse- 
cution of  the  dissenters,  of  Anne  Hutchinson  and  Roger 
Williams,  and  the  delusion  of  the  Salem  witchcraft  have 
been  made  much  of;  but  however  lamentable  these  seem 
now,  in  a  different  age  and  a  more  settled  society,  they 
were  then  looked  on  as  religious  disorders  of  the  same 
nature,  relative  to  the  commonwealth,  as  were  the  doings 
of  Morton  at  Merrymount  in  a  secular  way.  The  Puri- 
tans believed  in  government,  and  had  the  English  sense 
for  it,  and  they  valued  their  liberties  likewise  in  an 
English  temper.  When  the  most  has  been  charged 
against  them,  there  remains  the  state  they  founded,  with 
the  public  spirit  that  grew  up  with  it;  and  the  fact  that 
from  the  first  they  nursed  this  high  hope  of  their  for- 
tunes, looked  on  the  land  as  their  own  and  believed  in 
it,  and  regarded  their  prosperity  in  a  free  condition  as 
God's  dealing  with  them  was  one  fundamental  ground 
underlying  the  entire  revolutionary  period.  The  Revo- 
lution was  ingrained  in  them  by  their  birth  as  citizens  of 
the  New  World. 

This  is  one  reason  why  in  the  third  volume  of  the 
work  there  is  no  break  in  the  continuity  of  the  Puritan 
spirit.  A  new  political  question  had  arisen,  and  men  in 
secular  life  were  called  to  the  front  by  it,  but  the  tern- 


COLONIAL   BOOKS  271 

perament  of  the  people  as  expressed  in  the  new  voices 
was  the  same.  Society  had  grown  more  varied,  and 
commerce  and  law  were  coming  into  rivalry  with  the 
pulpit;  yet  the  mental  tone  is  still  one  of  sobriety,  dig- 
nity, and  a  fervor  which  did  not  pass  into  unreason.  At 
the  beginning  of  this  volume  stands  Franklin,  and  nearly 
all  the  men  of  the  Revolution  appear  before  the  end  is 
reached.  The  change  that  is  noticed  is  a  great  one. 
One  feels  that  the  colonies,  in  obtaining  independence, 
have  passed  into  the  state  of  a  true  nation.  Washing- 
ton's "Farewell  Address"  is  here,  and  more  than  the 
"Declaration"  itself,  which  is  also  here,  those  words  of 
Washington  signal  a  new  era.  Jefferson,  Adams,  Madi- 
son, Patrick  Henry's  famous  speech,  Paine,  and  Otis 
admonish  the  reader  that  the  question  is  no  longer  of 
sea  or  land  adventures,  of  Berkeley's  or  Edwards's 
theories,  of  Cambridge  or  Saybrook  platforms,  but  of 
those  broad  matters  which  concern  the  founding  of  a 
stable  state.  This  volume  is  necessarily  largely  polit- 
ical, and  yet  the  selection  here  has  also  been  excellently 
made,  and  the  nature  of  the  contents  lightened  by  intro- 
ducing many  letters  of  our  public  men.  Even  here  one 
does  not  come  into  the  view  of  literature,  in  the  ordi- 
nary sense.  The  editor  has  done  his  best  by  the  poets 
and  poetesses,  but  without  any  success  in  restoring  to 
them  any  of  their  contemporary  luster,  such  as  it  was. 
In  the  earlier  volumes  there  were  a  few  verses,  all  that 
could  possibly  be  called  into  service;  in  this  volume  there 
are  many,  and  those  which  illustrate  the  popular  songs 
of  the  Revolution  well  deserve  such  remembrance  as  is 
given  them;  but  even  with  Freneau,  the  first  name  which 
yet  retains  a  lingering  reputation  in  the  world,  he  cannot 
persuade  us  that  Poetry  had  yet  come  to  the  shores  which 


272  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

Berkeley  and  Herbert  had  prophesied  should  be  her 
chosen  seat.  There  is  only  one  copy  of  verses,  by  a 
youth  who  died  at  twenty-two,  and  left  this  pathetic  waif 
of  pleasantry  behind  him,  which  has  a  spark  of  nature 
in  it,  and  with  it  the  volume  ends. 

These  volumes  are  an  excellent  and  convenient 
resume  of  all  writings  which  by  a  liberal  use  of  the  word 
can  be  called  American,  for  the  first  century  and  a  half 
after  the  settlement.  The  extracts  afford  a  complete  and 
abundant  view  of  this  literature  in  travel,  history,  anec- 
dote, theology,  politics,  and  versifying;  and  the  passages 
chosen  are. such  as  illustrate  in  the  most  instructive  and 
entertaining  way  the  habits  and  customs,  the  modes  of 
thought,  the  lives,  and  the  public  spirit  of  the  people, 
so  far  as  any  record  of  them  survives.  Many  of  the 
originals  from  which  these  extracts  are  made  are  rare 
or  difficult  of  access,  and  many  of  them  also  are  such 
that  even  a  patient  reader  would  never  hunt  out  their 
contents.  The  editor  claims  that  the  "first  two  volumes 
contain  a  more  select  and  compact  representation  of  the 
writings  of  our  colonial  divines  than  has  before  been 
attempted."  Certainly  these  two  volumes  serve  the 
purpose  of  exhibiting  the  general  character  of  the  Puri- 
tan mind  in  New  England  admirably,  and  the  justice 
with  which  a  somewhat  delicate  task  has  been  discharged 
is  notable.  There  are  few  persons  whom  it  is  easier  to 
misrepresent  than  those  divines  of  the  old  stock;  but  as 
they  are  illustrated  here  by  their  own  words,  they  really 
seem  to  live  and  speak  in  their  proper  persons.  As  much 
can  be  said,  too,  for  the  sufficiency  of  the  tales  of  per- 
sonal adventure,  of  Indian  warfare,  and  of  the  disturbers 
of  the  colonies.  In  the  third  volume,  which  summarizes 
the  growth  and  progress  of  the  ideas  of  the  Revolution 


COLONIAL   BOOKS  273 

and  contains  its  greatest  state  papers,  one  feels  that  only 
a  part  of  that  large  mass  of  admirable  political  speech 
and  discussion  is  given;  but  the  best  of  it  has  been  in- 
cluded, and  so  as  to  reflect  in  a  lively  way  the  times 
and  the  men. 


CHARLES  BROCKDEN  BROWN 

THE  novels  of  Charles  Brockden  Brown  possess  only 
an  historical  interest.  He  was  the  first  to  write  Ameri- 
can fiction,  and  his  works  had  the  good  fortune  to  please 
in  London  before  the  time  of  Jane  Austen  and  Sir  Walter 
Scott;  he  came,  too,  in  the  period  after  Mrs.  Radcliffe 
and  Monk  Lewis,  and  had  his  genius  been  stronger  he 
might  have  had  the  distinction  of  being  remembered  as 
the  representative  of  the  change  of  the  novel  from  the 
wildly  romantic  into  a  more  natural  type.  He  stands 
just  at  that  point  of  development,  but  he  had  not  force 
or  character  enough  to  rise  to  a  position  in  literature 
which  should  command  attention  beyond  his  own  genera- 
tion. He  was  born  in  Philadelphia.  With  an  original 
taste  for  letters,  a  vigorous  imagination,  and  a  wide 
curiosity  for  knowledge  of  all  kinds,  a  literary  profession 
was  inevitable.  He  tried  his  hand  at  law,  but  abandoned 
the  study  after  a  brief  experience  of  it,  and  gave  his 
mind  to  the  moral  and  political  speculation  then  rife, 
to  the  manners  and  customs  of  nations,  to  history,  and 
to  the  individuals  whom  he  created  in  imagination,  and 
sent  on  their  travels.  He  wrote  several  novels,  and  left 
fragments  of  others.  His  political  pamphlets,  and  the 
"European  and  American  Annals"  which  he  wrote  for  the 
American  Register  from  1806  to  1809,  are  of  solid  worth, 
but  are  not  included  in  his  works.  He  died  in  1810, 
at  the  age  of  thirty-nine. 

This  short  biography  is  all  the  preface  needed  by  one 

275 


276  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

who  reads  his  writings,  and  it  might  easily  be  dispensed 
with.  It  is  not  his  life,  which  was  not  remarkable,  but 
his  position,  that  throws  light  upon  his  novels.  He  was 
in  his  time  a  reforming  novelist.  For  one  thing,  he 
thought  it  was  the  part  of  an  American  to  use  those 
"sources  of  amusement  to  the  fancy  and  instruction  to 
the  heart  that  are  peculiar  to  ourselves,"  and  which  he 
declares  "are  equally  numerous  and  inexhaustible."  He 
announced  his  purpose  "to  profit  by  some  of  these 
sources,"  and  in  "Edgar  Huntley"  he  tried  to  "exhibit 
a  series  of  adventures  growing  out  of  the  condition  of 
our  country,  and  connected  with  one  of  the  most  com- 
mon and  wonderful  diseases  or  affections  of  the  human 
frame."  Here  we  have  the  two  characteristics  which 
are  aimed  at  now  by  every  tyro,  truth  in  local  color  and 
in  the  facts  of  science.  That  he  understood  himself  to 
be  an  innovator  may  be  easily  gathered  from  his  frank 
assertion  of  his  "one  merit  —  that  of  calling  forth  the 
passion  and  engaging  the  sympathy  of  the  reader 
by  means  hitherto  unemployed  by  preceding  authors. 
Puerile  superstition  and  exploded  manners,  Gothic  castles 
and  chimeras,  are  the  materials  usually  employed 
for  this  end."  He  for  his  part  was  going  to  deal  with 
facts.  He  was,  in  a  word,  a  realist.  But  who  would 
have  guessed  it,  if  he  had  not  published  the  notice  in 
his  preface?  To  what  "facts"  did  he  have  recourse  to  ex- 
terminate and  supplant  those  "Gothic  castles  and 
chimeras"  with  which  Mrs.  Radcliffe  and  Monk  Lewis, 
in  the  van  of  good  Sir  Walter,  had  occupied  the  ground 
of  romance?  To  what  field  of  the  conflict,  to  what  stage 
of  the  comedy,  would  he  direct  attention,  that  his  readers 
might  no  more  be  cheated  and  fooled  with  entertainment 
afforded  by  "puerile  superstition  and  exploded  manners"?. 


CHARLES    BROCKDEN    BROWN  277 

Why,  ventriloquism,  and  sleep-walking,  and  the  wild 
red  Indian!  There  is  something  humorous  in  this  issue 
of  the  first  realistic  reformer,  for  one  cannot  doubt  that 
he  took  himself  seriously.  To  a  later  generation, 
Brown's  heroes  and  heroines  are  very  far  from  any 
humanity  that  rides  in  our  street-cars;  they  seem  little 
more  credible  than  the  Nun  and  the  Gallant  they  were 
to  do  away  with;  his  tales  are  wildly  improbable,  more 
impossible  than  ghosts  by  as  much  as  one  lays  aside 
incredulity  in  reading  of  "Gothic  castles."  The  realist 
of  to-day  must  peruse  these  novels  with  much  mirth,  if 
he  judges  them  by  the  style  of  to-day  in  men,  and  things, 
and  fiction. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  give  a  true  impression  of  the 
general  character  of  Brown's  six  novels  to  one  who  has 
not  read  one  or  two  of  them,  at  least.  They  are  with- 
out unity  of  design;  there  are  several  stories  which 
interweave  with  one  another  in  the  same  tale,  but  they 
are  not  correlated  among  themselves;  the  main  narra- 
tive is  not  so  much  broken  by  episodes,  but  rather  is 
itself  a  succession  of  slightly  connected  events  and  differ- 
ent family  histories;  the  method,  generally  speaking,  is 
like  that  of  the  novel  of  adventure,  in  which  it  is  not 
the  dramatic  plot,  but  the  exciting  stages  of  a  much- 
checkered  career,  that  holds  the  attention.  The  better 
ones  of  the  series,  "Wieland,"  "Arthur  Mervyn,"  and 
"Edgar  Huntley,"  have  some  special  feature,  it  is  true. 
In  one  the  mystery  of  the  story  is  in  ventriloquism,  in 
another  somnambulism;  and  the  idea  of  supplanting 
supernatural  by  physical  and  quasi-scientific  mystery 
was  an  original  and  useful  one,  fruitful  still  in  our  own 
days.  In  others  the  scenes  of  the  yellow-fever  epidemic 
in  New  York  and  Philadelphia,  of  which  Brown  had 


278  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

himself  been  a  witness,  afford  the  realistic  element,  and 
these  are  much  the  best  done  of  anything  from  his  pen; 
but  here,  too,  it  is  to  be  observed  that  he  discarded  the 
supernatural  only  to  hold  fast  to  the  exceptional.  In  the 
sphere  of  character  and  action  he  was  still  under  the 
shadow  of  the  old  castle;  the  spectacular  has  given  place 
to  the  sensational,  but  in  the  bosoms  of  Constantia  and 
Jane,  of  Wieland  and  Ormond  and  Sarsefield,  reigns  the 
very  breath  of  romantic  passion,  and  adventure  is  the 
genius  of  their  careers.  As  for  the  language  in  which 
they  address  one  another,  it  was  never  heard  off 
the  stage  of  melodrama;  they  enter  and  strike  attitudes 
and  have  their  say;  one  would  as  soon  think  of  interrupt- 
ing a  set  piece  of  fireworks  as  their  speeches.  The  style, 
too,  is,  beyond  concealment,  tedious.  The  truth  is,  these 
novels  are  as  much  gone  by  as  the  Algerian  pirates,  with 
whom  they  were  contemporary;  even  Mrs.  Radcliffe  and 
Monk  Lewis  have  kept  better  pace  with  the  modern 
reader  than  has  Brown. 

Yet,  historically,  he  is  curiously  interesting.  His 
pages  reflect  both  a  state  of  mind  and  a  mood  of  imagi- 
nation in  which  he  shared  only  as  a  member  of  a  larger 
world  of  men,  some  of  whom  were  destined  to  a  better 
fortune.  It  is  not  only  the  literary  reformer  who  is 
found  in  the  gallery  of  forgotten  things;  the  portrait  of 
the  social  innovator  is  as  commonly  to  be  met  with  there; 
and  in  Brown  we  find  the  stamp  and  impress  of  one  of 
the  most  noted  in  his  day  and  most  obscure  in  ours- 
the  philosopher  William  Godwin.  Brown  was  familiar 
with  his  writings,  as  not  long  ago  young  men  were  with 
John  Stuart  Mill's.  One  reads  between  the  lines  in  these 
tales  the  theory  and  maxims  and  speculation  to  which 
Godwin  gave  currency.  In  "Jane  Talbot,"  the  hero  of 


CHARLES   BROCKDEN    BROWN  279 

the  story  is  the  typical  young  man  with  dangerous  ideas 
—  or  he  has  that  reputation  in  the  ears  of  the  world, 
and  particularly  of  the  mother  of  the  young  lady  he 
would  marry.  Here  is  a  sketch  of  the  abandoned  youth 
of  the  first  days  of  the  century. 

"A  most  fascinating  book  fell  at  length  into  his  hands, 
which  changed  in  a  moment  the  whole  course  of  his  ideas. 
What  he  had  before  regarded  with  reluctance  and  terror, 
this  book  taught  him  to  admire  and  love.  The  writer 
has  the  art  of  the  grand  deceiver  —  the  fatal  art  of 
carrying  the  worst  poison  under  the  name  and  appear- 
ance of  wholesome  food;  of  disguising  all  that  is  impious, 
or  blasphemous,  or  licentious,  under  the  guise  and  sanc- 
tions of  virtue.  Golden  had  lived  before  this  without 
examination  or  inquiry.  His  heart,  his  inclination,  was 
perhaps  on  the  side  of  religion  and  true  virtue;  but  this 
book  carried  all  his  inclination,  his  zeal,  and  his  enthu- 
siasm over  to  the  adversary;  and  so  strangely  had  he 
been  perverted  that  he  held  himself  bound,  he  conceived 
it  to  be  his  duty,  to  vindicate  in  private  and  public,  to 
preach  with  vehemence,  his  new  faith.  The  rage  for 
making  converts  seized  him." 

In  this  strain  the  mother  writes  to  her  daughter  of 
Godwin's  "Political  Justice."  The  vigor  of  his  influence 
must  have  been  considerable  in  the  community,  his  name 
must  have  been  a  standing  target  in  society,  when  he  was 
invoked  by  a  novelist  to  create  the  character  of  such  a 
man  as  Golden,  even  by  rumor;  and  the  fact  that  Golden 
is  a  blameless  person,  quite  in  the  style  of  the  virtuous 
and  rather  colorless  philanthropist,  which  was  then  one 
of  the  ideals  set  up  for  youth,  ought  perhaps  to  indicate 
that  Brown  himself,  who  had  speculated  on  the  forbidden 
topic  of  the  marriage  relation,  was  not  unscathed  by  the 


280  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

malign  influence,  though  his  character  remained  un- 
harmed. As  reminiscences,  in  imaginative  literature,  of 
the  philosophizing  temper  of  the  year  1800,  all  such  pas- 
sages are  worth  remark. 

There  is,  too,  in  the  novels  a  pervading  conception  of 
man  as  a  creature  of  dark  passions,  which,  had  Brown 
written  a  score  of  years  later,  would  have  been  called 
Byronic.  Byron  did  not  so  much  invent  Byronism  as 
dothe  this  type  of  passion  with  a  power  and  lift  it  to 
a  height  that  made  it  his  own  creation  in  literature;  and 
it  happened  fortunately  for  his  fame  that  he  in  his  own 
person  embodied  it  for  the  imagination  of  his  contempo- 
raries. But  premonitions  of  Byronism,  and  even  in- 
complete prototypes  of  it,  are  to  be  found  before  his  day; 
and  in  Brown's  novels  there  are  several  such  passages." 
Take  this  characterization:  — 

"A  youth  of  eighteen,  a  volunteer  in  a  Russian  army 
encamped  in  Bessarabia,  made  prey  of  a  Tartar  girl, 
found  in  the  field  of  a  recent  battle.  Conducting  her 
to  his  quarters,  he  met  a  friend,  who,  on  some  pretense, 
claimed  the  victim.  From  angry  words  they  betook 
themselves  to  swords.  A  combat  ensued,  in  which  the 
first  claimant  ran  his  antogonist  through  the  body.  He 
then  bore  his  prize  unmolested  away,  and,  having  exer- 
cised brutality  of  one  kind  upon  the  helpless  victim, 
stabbed  her  to  the  heart,  as  an  offering  to  the  manes  of 
Sarsefield,  the  friend  whom  he  had  slain.  Next  morning, 
willing  more  signally  to  expiate  his  guilt,  he  rushed  alone 
upon  a  troop  of  Turkish  foragers,  and  brought  away  five 
heads,  suspended  by  their  gory  locks  to  his  horse's  mane. 
These  he  threw  upon  the  grave  of  Sarsefield,  and  con- 
ceived himself  fully  to  have  expiated  yesterday's  offense. 
In  reward  for  his  prowess,  the  general  gave  him  a 


CHARLES   BROCKDEN   BROWN  281 

commission  in  the  Cossack  troops.  This  youth  was 
Ormond." 

Crude,  brutal,  coarsely  laid  on,  it  is;  but  Ormond  — 
and  we  may  say  that  his  later  career  was  all  of  a  piece 
with  this  trifling  anecdote  of  his  teens  —  is  essentially 
an  earlier  Lara.  The  entire  atmosphere  of  "Ormond," 
which'  is  a  novel  of  violent  passion  and  detestable  wicked- 
ness, is  pre-Byronic;  and  Brown's  imagination,  or  his 
note-book  fro'm  historical  reading,  was  inexhaustibly 
fertile  of  the  sort  of  incident  instanced  by  the  quotation 
above.  The  despised  masters  and  mistresses  of  "puerile 
superstition"  did  not  sup  on  horrors  in  more  courses. 

It  is  not  with  Byron,  however,  but  with  Shelley,  that 
Brown's  name  is  lastingly  associated.  Shelley,  whose  own 
early  romances  in  the  German  style  remain  to  bear  wit- 
ness to  his  first  taste  in  fiction  had  just  the  right  opinions 
and  emotions  to  live  in  sympathizing  imagination  the  lives 
of  some  of  Brown's  heroes,  for  at  some  points  they 
touched  his  own  career  nearly.  That  passage  which 
draws  Colden's  character,  already  quoted,  might  have 
been  actually  written  of  Shelley  by  some  of  his  family 
detractors;  he  might  have  sat  for  the  portrait  of  Col- 
den  as  the  latter  is  represented  by  his  friends,  also. 
More  than  once,  in  the  other  novels,  one  comes  on  senti- 
ments, personal  situations,  and  ideals  of  conduct  through 
which  one  feels  at  once,  if  he  is  on  the  watch,  the  pulse 
of  Shelley  beating  as  he  reads.  For  example,  it  is  one 
of  Brown's  distinctions  that  his  pages  are  devoted,  when- 
ever they  touch  on  female  character,  to  the  advocacy  of 
the  right  of  woman  to  equal  education,  and  to  a  position 
of  equal  dignity  intellectually,  with  man.  Brown  ap- 
pears to  have  been  familiar  with  Mary  Wollstonecraft's 
writings  on  the  subject,  and  to  have  adopted  her  views 


282  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

so  far,  at  least,  as  the  mental  training  of  woman  is  con- 
cerned. The  reiteration  of  this  doctrine,  both  openly 
in  the  author's  discourse,  and  indirectly  in  the  conversa- 
tion of  the  characters,  was  enough  of  itself  to  win  Shel- 
ley's adherence.  On  the  imaginative  side,  Brown 
touched  him  also  in  the  marrow;  for  Shelley's  tempera- 
ment, being  extravagantly  romantic  in  his  nonage,  was 
the  local  habitation  in  which  Ormonds  and  Sarsefields 
and  their  tribe  thrive.  Ventriloquism  and  somnambulism, 
in  their  turn,  were  the  kind  of  science  Shelley  studied;  he 
perhaps  pursued  chemistry  as  much  with  the  hope  of 
raising  a  ghost  as  from  any  other  motive;  science  to 
him  was  only  another  form  of  that  marvel  which  he 
first  found  in  the  supernatural.  In  the  poet's  works,  per- 
haps the  name  Constantia,  in  the  lyric  "To  Constantia 
Singing,"  was  taken  from  the  novel  of  "Ormond";  but 
further  than  that  nothing  is  traceable. 

These  are  the  principal  points  of  Brown's  historical 
interest.  As  a  precursor  of  Cooper,  or  Hawthorne,  or 
Poe,  a  position  that  has  been  claimed  for  him,  he  cannot 
be  regarded; the  analogy  between  their  works  and  his 
is  of  the  slightest.  He  was  a  romancer  of  the  old  kind, 
although  he  made  efforts  in  the  direction  of  realism; 
he  has  no  art;  he  is  awkward,  long-winded,  and  melo- 
dramatic, interested  almost  wholly  in  adventure,  and 
save  for  the  accident  of  coming  first  and  being  a  Phila- 
delphian  would  be  without  note. 


LUCY  LARCOM 

A  MEMORIAL  ADDRESS    BEFORE    THE    BEVERLY 
HISTORICAL    SOCIETY 

THE  memory  of  Lucy  Larcom  extends  beyond  her  vil- 
lage-borders, and  is  familiar  in  many  families  of  her  own 
country  as  well  as  in  some  English  homes.  It  was  her 
fortune  to  touch  many  lives,  and  the  touch  was  not  easily 
to  be  forgotten.  As  a  teacher,  she  had  personal  power; 
as  a  writer,  she  had  companionableness ;  and,  in  the 
closer  relations  of  life,  especially  in  friendship,  she  exer- 
cised that  intimate  influence  which  is  a  peculiar  gift  and 
belongs  to  temperament.  The  recognition  she  received 
was,  for  these  reasons,  largely  personal  and  friendly,  and 
it  was  natural  that  upon  her  death,  those  who  valued  her 
as  a  part  of  their  own  lives,  should  gather,  as  they  did 
in  one  and  another  place,  to  hold  memorial  services;  but 
it  belongs  to  our  own  community,  of  which  she  made  one, 
to  give  in  a  marked  way  public  tribute  to  her  life  and 
work,  and  to  say  that  parting  word  of  honor  which  is  due 
on  the  cessation  of  such  a  life,  now  finished,  as  it  was 
lived,  in  our  midst.  Of  that  life  on  its  more  personal 
side  I  leave  her  biographer  to  speak;  to  us,  who  were  her 
neighbors,  her  personality  was  near  and  close;  but  to 
others  she  was  an  author;  and  for  them,  who  are  the 
greater  number,  her  memory  must  abide  mainly  in  her 
books ;  and  it  is  with  these  —  their  character  and  mean- 
ing—  that  it  falls  to  me  to  deal,  seeking  thus  to  show 

283 


284  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

more  clearly  the  value  of  her  life,  the  nature  of  her  work, 
and  the  influence  that  now  survives  after  her  labor  is 
done. 

Literature,  in  its  pure  form,  is  nothing  but  expres- 
sion—  the  expression  of  life;  in  proportion  as  a  writer's 
experience  embraces  that  of  his  own  community,  his 
people  and  country,  what  he  writes  becomes  the  expres- 
sion of  the  common  life  of  all,  and  is  therefore  of  interest 
to  all;  and  so,  in  ever  widening  scope,  as  the  horizons  of 
knowledge  and  sympathy  extend,  literature  becomes  the 
voice  of  a  community,  a  nation,  or,  in  the  greatest  in- 
stances, of  mankind.  Lucy  Larcom  was  not  in  this  sense 
a  great  writer,  but  she  gave  utterance  to  the  common 
feelings  and  thoughts,  and  especially  the  habitual  ideals 
of  the  people  among  whom  she  was  reared;  and,  in  a 
peculiar  way,  she  expressed  New  England  womanhood, 
and,  in  her  own  person,  stood  for  it,  as  one  of  its  strong 
and  characteristic  types.  She  wrote,  so  to  speak,  from 
the  soil  in  which  she  was  rooted,  —  from  the  things  she 
saw,  heard  and  felt,  just  as  others  about  her  might  do, 
out  of  her  own  sensations  and  emotions,  out  of  her  own 
life.  Whoever  has  read  her  verses  in  connection  with  her 
"New  England  Girlhood,"  must  have  observed  how  many 
of  her  poems  were  memories  of  childhood  in  the  town 
whose  child- world  she  describes.  Here  she  was  born  and 
grew  up,  differing  from  her  companions,  perhaps,  by  a 
greater  openness  to  the  world  without,  and  by  a  more 
thoughtful  intimacy  with  the  world  within,  and  especially 
by  having  the  native  gift  to  write.  She  had  the  same 
education  as  others;  and  the  round  of  her  days  was  that 
of  the  whole  village,  lying  drowsily,  as  she  describes  it, 
between  the  ocean  and  the  river,  with  storms  in  winter 
and  flowers  in  summer,  and  no  events  except  the  arrival 


LUCY   LARCOM  285 

of  the  stage,  the  home-coming  of  the  seafaring  people, 
and  the  weekly  sermon.  It  was  a  child's  world  that  she 
thus  remembered;  but  there  were  elements  in  it  that  sank, 
deep  as  life,  into  her  being,  that  mastered  her  will,  and 
entered,  as  an  inward  spirit,  into  her  hopes  and  labors. 
There  the  needle  was  magnetized  and  the  pole  of  her  life 
determined  while,  unaware,  she  noticed  only  the  tides 
washing  in,  the  ebb  and  flow  of  the  seasons  of  the  year, 
and  the  aged  faces  about  her.  From  what  secret  of  birth 
or  by  what  cunning  of  nature  the  poetic  impulse  has  its 
source,  none  can  tell;  but  it  is  easy  to  discern  upon  what 
it  is  nourished,  and  there  were  about  her  girlhood  ele- 
ments sufficient  to  wake  the  germ  and  sustain  its  life;  and 
these,  as  rarely  happens,  were  to  be  continuous  in  her 
thoughts  and  feelings. 

In  Lucy  Larcom's  verse  there  were  three  such  prin- 
ciples, formative  and  supporting,  which  governed  her 
from  the  beginning  of  her  conscious  life.  The  first  was 
the  power  of  the  sea.  It  has  been  long  observed  that  the 
poetry  of  the  world  has  been  made  by  the  great  sea  na- 
tions, Greece,  Italy  and  England,  and  there  is  something 
in  the  ocean  more,  perhaps,  than  in  any  other  great 
natural  feature  that  stirs  the  imagination  and  generates 
these  vague  moods  that  belong  to  the  poetic  tempera- 
ment. But  without  going  too  far  to  find  what  lies  near 
at  hand,  it  is  plain  that  the  ocean  brought  to  the  girlhood 
of  Lucy  Larcom  the  first  impression  of  the  changeful 
beauty  and  vast  power  of  nature,  the  first  horizon  of 
romantic  and  dreamy  suggestion,  and  the  first  touch  of 
mysterious  fate.  The  lives  of  the  people  were  blended 
with  it,  and  the  town  took  color  and  character  from  it. 
She  herself  speaks  of  the  waifs  and  strays  of  foreign 
lands  that  gave  picturesqueness  to  the  streets,  of  the 


286  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

voyages  always  on  the  lips  of  the  living,  and  of  the  watch- 
ing and  waiting  in  the  homes  along  the  road  and  the  lanes 
-."hardly  a  house  but  had  its  sorrow  of  one  who  went 
and  came  not  back."  It  was  the  same  experience  that 
Longfellow  recalled  from  his  boyhood  farther  down  the 
coast: — 

"I  remember  the  black  wharves  and  the  slips, 
And  the  sea-tides  tossing  free, 
And  Spanish  sailors  with  bearded  lips, 
And  the  beauty  and  mystery  of  the  ships, 
And  the  magic  of  the  sea." 

And  she  saw  it  always,  gleaming  and  restless  and  voice- 
ful  —  and  she  dreaded  it.  There  is  no  love  for  the  sea 
in  her  poems.  The  two  best-known,  the  companion 
pieces,  "Hannah"  and  "Skipper  Ben,"  are  sea-tragedies. 
The  best  single  poem,  as  I  think,  —  at  least  of  this 
class  —  "A  Sea  Glimpse"  —  is  a  land-piece,  in  which  the 
girl,  looking  out  for  her  lover,  occupies  the  foreground 
relieved  against  the  harbor-sky;  it  embodies  the  joy  of 
danger  passed.  The  stanzas  that  describe  "the  two  pale 
sisters"  of  Baker's  Island  lights,  exhaust  the  imagery  of 
guardianship  against  a  perilous  and  betraying  enemy 
which  lies  in  wait  for  prey.  In  every  instance,  nearly, 
the  sea  is  an  object  of  fear;  and  even  the  boat,  wreathed 
with  bittersweet,  dropping  along  the  ledges  and  the 
sands,  keeps  well  in-shore,  with  a  shudder  at  last  — 

"Anchored  in  the  dusk,  a  spell 
From  the  folds  of  twilight  fell 
On  the  bay's  black,  star-strewn  floor; 
Awe,  with  that  weird  glitter  crept 
Shuddering  through  our  thoughts;  we  stept 
Gladly  on  firm  land  once  more." 


LUCY  LARCOM  287 

This  is  her  mood  —  one  of  dread.  Afterwards,  when 
she  had  begun  to  go  away  from  the  sea-side,  she  acknowl- 
edged frankly  that  she  preferred  the  scenery  and  com- 
panionship of  the  mountains,  and  with  them  she  often 
spent  her  summers.  But  the  mountains  were  to  her  a 
kind  of  spiritual  landscape,  nigh  to  heaven  and  kindred 
with  an  aspiring  life;  they  never  had,  however,  the  hu- 
man power  of  the  ocean,  never  touched  the  common  life 
so  intimately  and  participated  in  it,  for  good  or  ill.  The 
proof  is  that  the  mountains  gave  her  no  such  poems  as 
the  "Wild  Roses  of  Cape  Ann."  She  saw  the  prairie,  too, 
and  lived  on  it,  but  she  never  won  its  secret.  None  of 
the  poems  are  so  outward  —  so  of  the  eye,  merely  —  as 
those  in  which  she  describes  it,  though  she  gives  a  few 
well-rendered  bits,  in  "Elsie  in  Illinois":  — 

"Garden  without  path  or  fence, 
Rolling  up  its  billowy  bloom 
To  her  low,  one-windowed  room." 

or,  better  still,  the  lines  describing  the  husband  coming 
home  — 

"Coming  with  the  evening  sky, — 
Through  the  prairie,  through  the  sky, — 
Each  as  from  eternity." 

There  is  the  spaciousness  of  the  prairie  and  its  near- 
ness to  the  sky  in  that;  but  such  touches  are  rare.  So 
far  as  nature  was  concerned,  she  must  be  thought  of  as 
living  between  the  two  horizons  of  the  mountains  north- 
ward and  the  sea  eastward,  with  a  glimpse  of  the  Merri- 
mac  between.  In  rendering  the  outward  aspects  of  this 
region  she  is  at  home,  and  she  describes  with  equal  power 
the  two  great  features  of  the  scene,  with  more  delicacy 
than  strength,  but  often  with  great  beauty  of  atmosphere. 


288  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

The  second  principle,  that  governed  in  her  work,  was 
sympathy  with  humble  life.  She  was  born  of  the  people 
and  she  remained  one  of  them.  She  worked  for  her  living, 
first  at  Lowell,  and  though  mill-life  in  those  days  seems 
like  an  anticipation  of  girls'  colleges,  still  it  was  mill- 
life —  work  among  the  machines  for  a  daily  wage,  and, 
throughout  her  life,  she  worked,  as  a  teacher  at  school 
and  then  among  her  books  as  a  writer;  and  it  was  always 
a  frugal  living  that  she  earned,  without  superfluity,  com- 
pelling simplicity  in  all  things  —  the  life  of  the  common 
New  England  people.  But  such  a  life,  humble  and  modest, 
has  a  saving  grace,  and  of  it  she  reaped  the  full  benefi- 
cence. It  breeds  respect  for  others,  and  self-respect.  It 
constitutes  a  bond  with  simple  human  lives,  with  the 
mass,  by  means  of  which  sympathy  expands  and  the 
knowledge  of  what  is  fundamental  in  worth  grows  plain. 
To  be  so  near  to  others  brings  both  opportunity  and 
power  of  service;  and  Lucy  Larcom,  merely  because  she 
was  one  in  this  large  community,  won  all  the  influence 
she  ever  had.  Merely  as  an  example,  she  affected  many 
lives.  It  is  impossible  to  conjecture  how  many  a  working 
girl,  learning  of  her,  has  derived  moral  strength  and 
mental  impulse,  and  also  patience,  simply  because  such 
circumstances  had  once  been  shared  by  a  woman  who 
showed  to  all  that  womanhood  was  neither  hurt  in  its 
finer  qualities  nor  cheapened  in  others7  eyes  by  such  a 
life.  Her  poems,  especially  devoted  to  the  praise  of  the 
working  life,  are  not  the  most  successful,  but  their  spirit 
is  democratic  and  inspiriting  to  those  who  may  find  the 
burdens  of  daily  labor  heavy.  She  was  careful  to  pre- 
serve her  remembrance  of  her  younger  days  and  sym- 
pathy with  this  common  life;  and  by  means  of  this  she 
gained  her  audience,  which  was  always  in  the  class  to 


LUCY   LARCOM  289 

which  she  belonged;  and  she  was  understood  by  them  be- 
cause she  used  the  language  of  their  experience.  One 
curious  result  of  this  sympathy  may  be  noticed  by  the 
way.  In  her  poems  she  had  a  habit  of  praising  the  com- 
monest flowers  because  they  were  many  and  humble  and 
were  content  to  bloom  in  every  place. 

"The  weed,  to  him  who  loves  it,  is  a  flower  — "  is  one 
of  her  quotations,  and  she  had  a  certain  tenderness  for 
all  weeds  that  could  pass  as  flowers  and  wrote  upon  them, 
like  neglected  children  of  the  roadside.  It  calls  to  mind 
one  of  Lincoln's  great  sayings:  "I  think  God  loves  the 
plain  people,  because  he  made  so  many  of  them." 

The  third  principle  in  this  poetry,  as  a  whole,  is  the 
moral  and  religious  spirit  of  the  community  in  which 
Lucy  Larcom  was  bred.  It  made  the  first  impression 
upon  her,  in  childhood,  through  its  hymns.  She  learned 
hundreds  of  them  — 

"The  long,  quaint  words,  the  hum-drum  rhyme, 
The  verse  that  reads  like  prose — " 

as  she  herself  describes  them;  but  how  deeply  they  in- 
fluenced her  is  shown  by  other  passages  of  the  same  poem 
in  which  she  praises  them  with  a  fervor  caught  from 
themselves: — 

"The  psalm-tunes  of  the  Puritan; 
The  hymns  that  dared  to  go 
Down  shuddering  through  the  abyss  of  man, 
His  gulfs  of  conscious  woe; 
That  scaled  the  utmost  height  of  bliss 
Where  the  veiled  seraph  sings, 
And  worlds  unseen  brought  down  to  this 
On  music's  mighty  wings." 

On  the  other  hand,  the  doctrinal  part  of  the  Sunday 
3ervice  did  not  much  engage  her  interest,  or  affect  her 


29o  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

own  poetic  work.  It  did  not  enter  into  her  mind  in  any 
vitalizing  way.  One,  however,  who  was  born  with  the 
literary  gift,  could  not  escape  the  intellectual  influence 
in  the  New  England  sermon  which  constituted  largely 
the  mental  life  of  the  people;  and  in  several  ways  she  was 
formed  by  it.  In  particular  she  derived  from  this  source 
the  habit  of  rinding  a  lesson  in  the  fall  of  the  sparrow  and 
the  cutting  down  of  the  grass,  or,  in  other  words,  of 
moralizing  nature.  She  never  seems  to  care  for  beauty 
merely  for  its  own  sake,  or,  at  least,  such  a  mood  was  rare 
and  subordinate  in  her  life.  She  sought  to  ally  the  beauty 
of  nature  with  some  human  association  or  some  spiritual 
meaning,  and  to  turn  nature  into  parables. 

"The  universe  is  one  great  loving  thought, 
Writ  in  hieroglyphs  of  bud  and  bloom"  — 

she  says;  and,  in  detail,  the  rock  that  makes  the  rill  break 
into  murmuring  sound  becomes  a  .symbol  of  the  blessing 
of  obstacles  — 

"The  happy  trouble  of  the  rock 
That  makes  her  life  a  song"; 

and  this  is  the  usual  method  of  allegory  in  her  verse, 
which  would  afford  hundreds  of  such  examples.  A  second 
peculiarity,  which  was,  at  any  rate,  fostered  by  the  liter- 
ary characteristics  of  the  New  England  sermon,  is  the 
habit  of  seeking  short  and  condensed  expressions  of 
thought,  like  maxims  or  proverbs  in  style,  but  original. 
Such  lines  stand  out  in  the  verse;  they  are  quotable  lines; 
and  are  meant  to  stick  in  the  mind.  Her  poems  are  full 
of  them.  Here  are  one  or  two  characteristic  examples : 

"Said  Psyche,  Pain  assures  me  that  I  live!" 
"To  stifle  truth  is  to  stop  her  breath." 


LUCY   LARCOM  291 

"The    threshold   where   our   hopes   begin   to   climb,   is  our 
horizon." 

"I  said  it  in  the  meadow  path, 
I  say  it  on  the  mountain  stairs;  — 
The  best  things  any  mortal  hath 
Are  those  which  every  mortal  shares." 

All  this  is  in  a  moralizing  strain,  and  illustrates  also 
how  her  thoughts  as  well  as  her  images  were  dominated 
by  the  mastery  of  that  New  England  spirit  which  was 
absorbed  in  the  moral  life  on  one  hand  and  in  religious 
life  upon  the  other.  But  she  did  not  owe  her  religious 
thoughts  directly  to  the  elder  Puritanism  from  which 
she  derived  her  moral  and  intellectual  cast  of  mind. 

These  three  strands,  then,  the  sea  with  its  poetic  sug- 
gestions, humble  life  with  its  understanding  sympathies, 
and  the  preoccupation  of  the  New  England  mind  with 
morality  and  the  spiritual  meaning  of  nature,  are  the 
material  of  which  Lucy  Larcom's  poems  are  woven.  She 
thus  pictures  and  expresses  the  inward  life  and  outward 
circumstances  of  the  people,  whose  traditions  she  in- 
herited and  whose  ideals  she  accepted.  She  was  deeply 
attracted  to  the  soil  she  sprang  from,  and  loved  the  land- 
scape and  those  whose  figures  and  lives  were  blended  with 
it;  but  it  was  the  landscape  and  the  people  of  the  older 
town  of  her  childhood  that  she  idealized  in  her  verse,  and 
thus  left  a  poetic  transcript  of  it  in  her  book  which  we 
should  be  very  grateful  for,  inasmuch  as  it  gives  to  our 
past,  in  some  sense,  the  transforming  and  perpetuating 
touch  of  literature,  and  unites  us  with  the  few  other  towns 
of  the  country  that  have  been  thus  fortunate.  What  this 
older  life  meant  to  her,  and  how  to  her  eyes  it  was  made 
up  of  the  elements  already  mentioned,  so  blended  as  to  be 
inextricably  one,  is  best  shown,  perhaps  —  to  take  a 


LITERARY  MEMOIRS 

single  instance  —  in  the  closing  lines  of  the  "Wild  Roses 
of  Cape  Ann": 

"Thank  God  for  those  old-fashioned  sea-side  folk, 
And  for  the  home  that  rooted  their  strong  lives 
For  many  generations.    Virtues  far 
Out-perfuming  the  rose,  —  pure  souls,  untouched 
By  the  world's  frosty  standards,  —  are  not  these 
True  growths  of  our  New  England  atmosphere, 
By  rarest  of  exotics  unreplaced? 
Strangers  have  found  that  landscape's  beauty  out, 
And  hold  its  deeds  and  titles.    But  the  waves 
That  wash  the  quiet  shores  of  Beverly, 
The  winds  that  gossip  with  the  waves,  the  sky; 
That  immemorially  blends,  listening, 
Have  reminiscences  that  still  assert 
Inalienable  claims  from  those  who  won, 
By  sweat  of  their  own  brows,  this  heritage." 

It  was  thus  that  in  her  principal  poetic  works  she  said 
farewell  to  the  old  home. 

And  here  I  might  end;  but  all  would  miss  something 
which,  everywhere  present  in  her  book,  has  been  unmen- 
tioned.  I  mean  the  spiritual  instinct  in  it,  that  element 
which  was  in  her  far  stronger  than  the  merely  poetic  im- 
pulse, overbore  it,  as  life  went  on,  and  in  the  end  dis- 
placed it.  The  verses  which  she  wrote  in  early  life  are 
the  most  popular  and  widest  known  among  her  own 
people,  and  they  are,  poetically,  the  best  —  most  fresh, 
most  original,  most  disengaged  from  any  ulterior  pur- 
pose beyond  the  simple  poem  itself.  As  she  grew  older, 
the  purely  human,  the  individual  and  dramatic  element, 
as  it  is  shown  in  "Hannah"  and  "A  Sea-Glimpse,"  gave 
way  more  and  more  to  the  reflective  and  moral  mood,  and 
finally  that  mood  itself  became  completely  spiritualized, 
and  she  ended  as  a  poet  of  purely  religious  moods.  It 


LUCY   LARCOM  293 

has  already  been  said  that  this  progress  and  growth  in 
her  was  not  directly  due  to  the  elder  Puritanism.  Yet, 
at  first,  she  received  her  ideal  of  life  from  that  source, 
and  to  her  that  ideal  in  its  practical  form  was  the  applica- 
tion of  a  rather  stern  conscience  to  rather  hard  work  — 
a  laborious  life  of  duty  as  it  came.  But  on  the  imagina- 
tive side,  on  the  side  that  looks  for  a  strip  of  blue  sky 
over  the  plowed  field,  and  the  sea-furrows,  she  was 
obliged  to  seek  elsewhere  for  horizon  and  prospect.  She 
found  them  at  last  in  books,  —  in  volumes  that  in  her 
generation  suffered  a  new  birth  out  of  old  time,  in  the 
works  of  Tauler,  the  German  mystic,  and  Plato,  the 
Greek  idealist,  and  others  of  grave  and  reverend  names, 
then,  in  the  time  of  Emerson,  much  on  the  lips  of  young 
women  of  growing  and  ambitious  minds.  But,  in  her  own 
case,  she  found  her  nearest  guides  in  the  sermons  of 
Maurice  and  Robertson.  The  least  thoughtful  reader  of 
her  works  must  have  been  struck  by  her  great  capacity 
to  enjoy  and  appreciate  life  —  mere  living.  The  lines 
with  which  she  closes  the  full-voiced  and  resonant 
"Thanksgiving  Hymn"  — 

"For  thine  own  great  gift  of  Being 
I  thank  thee,  O  my  God—" 

might  serve  as  a  descriptive  motto  of  all  her  works,  so 
constant  is  the  spirit  of  joyfulness  in  life  that  inspires 
them.  She  especially  sympathized  with  the  vast  ener- 
gies of  nature's  vitality,  and  felt  the  contagion  of  it  — 

"Making  it  joy  to  think  of  swelling  buds, 
And  fruit,  slow-ripening  on  the  apple-trees, 
And  young  birds  fledging  in  the  robin's  nest." 

She  felt  this  current  in  the  outward  world,  this  stream 


294  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

of  unexhausted  being,  and  she  thought  of  it  with  Words- 
worth's faith  — 

"That  every  flower  that  grows 
Enjoys  the  air  it  breathes." 

This  was  the  world  without.  But  the  inward  force 
within  herself,  and  in  man,  the  life  of  conscious  and  as- 
piring being,  was  even  more  deeply  realized  by  her  as 
an  object  of  awe  and  mystery.  On  the  one  side  was  na- 
ture, on  the  other  the  soul;  but  if  she  heard  in  that  elder 
Puritanism  the  voice  of  the  Psalmist  declaring  God  in 
his  works,  and  the  voice  of  the  Apostle  declaring  Christ 
in  man,  they  were  not  convincing  voices  which  should 
seem  the  expression  of  her  own  experience.  There  was  a 
gladness  in  her  thoughts  of  life,  in  both  of  these  great 
manifestations,  that  needed  a  different  atmosphere  to 
grow  in,  and  she  found  it  in  Maurice  and  Robertson 
through  whom  she  came  in  contact  with  the  most  spiritual 
and  personal  religious  thought  of  the  English  world  and 
her  thoughts  then  began  to  take  on  that  spiritual  reality, 
that  direct  experience  of  enlightenment  and  enthusiasm 
within,  in  which,  doubtless,  she  was  also  much  sustained 
and  reassured  by  her  friendship  with  Whittier,  whose 
"faith  had  center  everywhere,  nor  cared  to  fix  itself  to 
form."  Thus  she  led  by  herself  her  own  life  with  her 
own  thoughts;  and,  still  meditating,  came  finally  to  iden- 
tify the  energy  of  life  in  nature  and  in  man  with  a  spirit- 
ual power  working  out  its  will  in  both.  In  three  stanzas 
she  condensed  this  conclusion,  and  her  aspiration  with 
respect  to  that  power: — 

"O  Life  that  breathest  in  all  sweet  things 
That  bud  and  bloom  upon  the  earth, 
That  fillest  the  sky  with  song  and  wings, 
That  walkest  the  world  through  human  birth; 


LUCY   LARCOM  295 

O  Life  that  lightest  in  every  man 
A  spark  of  thine  own  being's  flame, 
And  wilt  that  spark  to  glory  fan, — 
Our  listening  souls  would  hear  that  name. 

Thou  art  the  Eternal  Christ  of  God, 
The  Life  unending,  unbegun; 
The  Deity  brightening  through  the  cloud; 
The  Presence  of  the  Invisible  One." 

With  such  convictions,  arrived  at  through  conscientious 
years  of  thought  and  growth,  she  could  not  but  feel  her 
tasks  in  life  absorbed  in  the  one  labor  of  endeavoring  to 
share  with  others  the  experience  which  was  her  own,  in 
these  regions  of  truth  and  emotion,  and  so  moved  now 
also  by  the  strong  influence  of  her  later  friendship  with 
Bishop  Brooks,  she  had  already  entered  on  her  work  as  a 
religious  guide  and  teacher,  when  her  death  came.  Her 
books  on  these  themes,  in  prose,  were  more  widely  scat- 
tered abroad  and  were,  perhaps,  more  influential  in  life, 
than  her  poems  had  ever  been,  and  among  her  poems, 
except  in- our  neighborhood  and  the  homes  of  those  who 
care  for  New  England  with  special  warmth,  the  longest- 
lived  will  be  her  hymns  and  the  other  religious  verses  of 
these  last  years. 

Such,  at  least  to  my  eyes,  was  the  life  of  the  woman 
whose  portrait  now  looks  down  on  us  from  these  walls; 
and  it  is  well  that  the  first  thus  to  be  hung  upon  them 
with  ceremony,  is  that  of  one  so  deserving  of  that  re- 
membrance which  it  is  our  main  object,  as  a  Society,  to 
secure  and  perpetuate.  It  was  a  life  well  lived.  And  yet, 
after  all,  the  significant  thing  in  it  is  not  that  she  caught 
the  beauty  of  these  fields  and  woods,  and  the  sea  that  we 
look  on  by  day  and  night,  and  strove  to  make  them 
poetical  ground;  not  that  she  praised  the  lowly  life  and 


296  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

the  virtues  that  inhere  in  it  and  illustrated  them  in  her- 
self with  simplicity  and  power;  not  that  she  used  the 
flowers  of  our  wayside  for  parables,  and  shaped  those 
close-cut  sentences  that  carry  home  to  the  heart  the 
truths  by  which  daily  life  is  led;  not  even  that  she  found 
inspiration  for  herself  and  friendly  aid  for  others  in  a 
life-long  religious  meditation;  but  rather  that  she  showed, 
in  the  total  unity  of  her  life  and  work,  that  the  pursuit  of 
an  ideal,  however  conceived,  is  the  surest  pledge  that  a 
life  shall  be  nobly  led  itself,  and  have  greatest  utility  to 
others.  Her  sense  of  the  great  blessing  of  life,  of  the 
duty  to  develop  it  to  the  utmost  of  one's  capacity  for 
living  in  mind  and  heart  as  well  as  in  the  body,  gives  a 
ring  to  every  line  in  which  she  urges  the  soul  onward  — 

"Climb  for  the  white  flower  of  thy  dream  1" 


ON  THE  DEATH  OF  HOLMES 

THE  death  of  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  closed  many  ca- 
reers in  one  end.  His  versatility  was  such  that  one  hesi- 
tates whether  to  speak  first  of  the  man  of  society,  or  the 
literary  wit,  or  the  practitioner,  or  the  novelist,  or  the 
poet.  This  diversity  sprang  rather  from  the  different 
employments  to  which  he  put  his  mind  than  from  the 
various  richness  of  natural  genius.  It  was  in  some  degree 
the  product  of  the  influences  of  the  city,  which  operate 
upon  men  of  education  to  bring  out  their  whole  capacity. 
He  was  from  his  breeding  both  academic  and  urban;  and 
he  carried  out  to  the  end  the  early  aims  and  ambitions 
which  thrive  in  the  centers  of  learning  and  society.  He 
was  one  of  that  rare  class  of  minds  to  which  their  en- 
vironment is  not  a  limitation.  He  harmonized  with  the 
conditions  of  living  into  which  he  was  born,  with  the 
settled  order  of  old  Boston,  old  Harvard,  and  the  Satur- 
day Club;  and  as  he  made  the  most  of  them,  they  made 
the  most  of  him.  The  identity  between  himself,  as  a 
literary  personality,  and  Boston  was  the  largest  part  of 
his  good  fortune.  He  was  that  best  sort  of  a  representa- 
tive of  his  city,  a  growth  out  of  its  previous  society,  tra- 
ditions, and  prejudices.  The  exclusiveness  which  made 
him  prefer  a  man  of  family  was  a  part  of  his  genius;  the 
same  feeling,  with  a  difference,  made  him  prefer  his  own 
town  to  the  rest  of  the  universe;  and  thus  it  was  not  by 
accident,  but  by  right  of  nature,  that  he  should  be  the 
official  poet  of  Harvard,  which  filled  a  larger  relative 

297 


298  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

place  in  Boston  life  than  in  these  days,  and  the  loyal 
laureate  of  his  city  to  salute,  to  toast,  and  to  bid  farewell 
to  the  guests  whom  it  most  honored.  It  would  be  unjust, 
nevertheless,  to  refer  to  him  now  solely  or  mainly  as  a 
poet.  He  succeeded  quite  as  well  in  the  use  of  his  other 
talents,  and  these  helped  largely  in  establishing  the  repu- 
tation of  his  later  days.  The  scientific  element,  even  in 
his  books,  is  a  constant  quantity;  it  colors  his  novels  and 
often  gives  glow  to  his  stanzas,  and  in  his  printed  conver- 
sations over  the  table  it  is  ever  at  hand  for  illustration. 
His  wit,  too,  and  those  felicities  of  which  he  learned  the 
secret  in  private  talk  with  his  friends,  are  ingredients 
never  lacking.  He  must  be  regarded  as  poet,  professor, 
and  autocrat  at  once,  if  one  would  have  a  rounded  con- 
ception of  him,  and  understand  what  sort  of  personal 
power  in  him  it  was  that  extended  a  local  reputation  over 
a  continent. 

When  one  reviews  his  life,  perhaps  the  most  obvious 
trait  of  it  is  its  apparent  lack  of  change.  It  is  true  that 
his  literary  career  did  not  really  begin  until  he  was  well 
on  in  middle  life;  he  came  forward  then  with  a  mature 
and  well-stored  mind,  and  the  great  impression  he  made 
was  due  to  the  self-repression  which  had  allowed  him  to 
come  at  last  full-handed  and  with  his  thoughts  and 
manner  unstaled.  It  would  have  been  remarkable  if  his 
literary  talent  had  suffered  any  serious  modification  after 
such  a  success  so  late  in  life.  But  as  a  poet  he  had  been 
precocious,  and  there  are  very  many  of  his  verses,  upon 
all  sorts  of  occasions  and  in  several  styles,  which  were 
produced  in  the  earlier  years  of  his  manhood;  and  in 
these  there  is  the  same  quality,  somewhat  less  highly 
developed,  perhaps,  as  in  the  last  lines  from  his  pen.  He 
had  never  attempted  the  modern  style  in  poetry;  there 


ON  THE  DEATH  OF  HOLMES      299 

are  no  "native  wood-notes  wild"  in  his  range,  nothing  in 
"the  pastoral  line,"  nothing  of  Keats  or  the  later  ro- 
manticists; he  was  from  the  start  a  poet  of  society,  and 
he  found  it  convenient  and  perhaps  necessary  to  continue 
in  the  somewhat  mechanical  measures  of  the  past,  which 
are  best  fitted  for  artificial  and  occasional  verse. 

Apart  from  the  fact  that  Dr.  Holmes  adopted  and  re- 
tained these  simple  and  prosaic  measures,  one  other  cir- 
cumstance possibly  tended  to  stiffen  his  early  choice  and 
practice  into  the  gyves  of  habit.  Most  of  his  verses  were 
not  merely  recited,  but  were  written  for  recitation.  The 
poet  kept  in  mind  the  appeal  to  the  audience  necessary 
for  success,  the  momentary  stroke,  the  immediate  flash 
of  appreciation,  the  mixture  of  humor  and  epigrammatic 
eloquence,  most  effective  to  the  ear  of  an  assembly;  and 
to  secure  these  ends  the  Queen  Anne  forms  of  verse  are 
the  best  adapted.  His  employment  as  a  poet  of  occasions, 
no  doubt,  had  its  effect  in  accustoming  him  to  write  from 
an  intellectual  and  social  impulse  out  of  which  the  poetry 
of  the  nineteenth  century  does  not  spring.  There  is 
little  to  show,  however,  that  he  had  any  lyrical  gift  of 
the  higher  order.  His  vigorous  faculty  was  the  intellect; 
with  it  were  something  of  sentiment  and  much  of  humor, 
which,  blending  with  the  strong  mental  element,  resulted 
in  poetry  in  which  every  line  is  masculine.  The  extraor- 
dinary success  which  Dr.  Holmes  had  in  adhering  to 
an  antiquated  form  of  verse  is  due  to  its  admirable  fitness 
to  be  the  vehicle  of  his  mind.  He  discovered  this  corre- 
spondence between  his  thought  and  his  measure,  his  oc- 
casion and  his  instrument,  early  in  his  career;  and  to 
the  end  of  his  days  the  range  of  his  poetry  remained  the 
same.  It  is  not  likely  that  it  was  limited  by  the  narrow 
compass  of  his  verse  forms;  rather,  the  two  coincided. 


300  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

The  conservatism  observable  in  his  poetry  was  char- 
acteristic of  his  entire  nature.  Even  when  he  was  liberal, 
it  was  with  a  Toryish  spirit.  He  felt  strongly  upon  a  few 
points.  He  was  never  at  a  loss  for  a  word  in  favor  of 
liberal  theology,  and  one  of  his  favorite  modes  of  praise 
was  by  means  of  censure  of  the  old  school.  He  was,  dur- 
ing the  war,  a  strong  Unionist,  and  his  stanzas  of  the 
time  are  remarkable  now  for  the  heat  of  their  rhetoric, 
aglow  with  the  intense  feeling  of  the  hour;  but  he  did  not 
often  use  his  metrical  gifts  for  controversy.  On  the  other 
hand,  his  conservatism  supplied  him  with  admirable 
powers  of  resistance.  He  was  proof  against  whatever 
did  not  fall  in  with  his  habits  of  thought  and  standards 
of  judgment.  In  these  there  was  a  certain  admixture  of 
tradition.  Along  his  own  lines,  however,  he  developed 
with  steady  gains  of  power  and  touch.  Some  of  his  later 
poems  rank  with  the  best  of  an  earlier  time  in  literary 
skill  and  in  their  own  charm.  The  "Autocrat,"  which 
marks  the  maturity  of  his  faculties,  is  his  richest  work 
in  both  prose  and  verse.  It  exhibits  a  mind  with  various 
powers  in  admirable  composition  working  harmoniously 
and  easily  together.  It  shows  both  weakness  and 
strength.  One  would  have  inferred,  from  the  handling 
of  the  little  romance  in  its  pages,  that  there  would  be 
some  uncertainty  and  awkwardness  in  the  author's  story- 
telling when  he  should  come  to  the  making  of  novels.  Its 
greatest  attraction  lies  in  the  personality  of  the  talker, 
who  was  able  under  this  fiction  to  give  expression  to  his 
discursive  mind,  to  use  those  unexpected  but  apt  com- 
parisons, and  to  announce  those  paradoxes,  which  belong 
to  the  fine  art  of  conversation,  to  expose  his  hobbies,  and 
to  exploit  his  scientific  knowledge — in  a  word,  to  sur- 
render his  mind  into  his  readers'  hands.  Dr.  Holmes, 


ON   THE   DEATH   OF   HOLMES  301 

to  every  one  who  read  this  volume,  immediately  became 
like  a  familiar  figure  on  the  street;  he  had  found  the  way 
to  make  the  acquaintance  of  men  and  women  whom  he 
did  not  meet  directly,  and  he  did  it  so  successfully  that 
he  became  at  once  an  old  friend;  it  is  as  the  "Autocrat" 
that  he  is  still  most  often  referred  to  and  best  known. 
In  the  later  volumes  of  the  series  there  was  the  same 
sense  of  immediate  communication  between  author  and 
reader.  The  popularity  of  all  these  monologues  among 
men  of  affairs  was  very  remarkable.  The  vitality,  acute- 
ness,  and  originality  of  statement,  the  incisive  and  abso- 
lute manner,  and  the  intermittent  humor  which  were  the 
distinguishing  marks  of  the  author,  were  of  themselves 
sufficient  to  account  for  this,  but  something  was  due  to 
the  rarity  of  the  sensation.  It  is  not  often  that  a  man  of 
mature  years  and  such  admirable  social  equipment  writes 
a  book  for  the  entertainment  of  his  fellows  in  the  same 
spirit  in  which  he  would  sit  down  to  talk  with  his  friends, 
and  discusses  with  them  things  in  general.  It  requires, 
moreover,  some  experience  in  growing  old  to  appreciate 
the  flavor  of  the  style.  One  may  observe  in  Dr.  Holmes's 
later  prose,  as  in  his  poetry,  the  absence  of  any  change 
in  his  quality  or  form.  There  is  in  his  very  last  papers 
an  even  more  intimate  mode  of  address,  and  perhaps  a 
mellower  temper,  natural  to  old  age  such  as  he  was  for- 
tunate enough  to  enjoy;  but  this  is  only  what  years  will 
do  for  a  good  vintage. 

As  a  man  of  letters  Dr.  Holmes  has  the  wide  scope 
here  briefly  touched;  but  it  is,  perhaps,  rather  as  a  man 
of  his  time  that  he  will  be  remembered.  Even  now  a 
large  part  of  his  reputation  rests  upon  other  grounds 
than  his  books.  His  personality  counts  perceptibly  in 
his  popularity.  He  is,  too,  a  part  of  the  past  of  Boston. 


302  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

Merely  to  turn  over  the  pages  of  his  poems  reminds  us 
with  how  large  a  portion  of  the  literary  life  of  the  city 
in  his  period  he  was  in  close  contact.  He  was  himself, 
as  has  been  remarked,  an  inheritor  of  the  old  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  poets  as  a  recitationist,  and  he  is  the  last  of  the 
line.  The  titles  of  his  biographies  recall  his  close  associ- 
ation with  Motley  and  Emerson,  and  the  number  of  his 
elegies  upon  learned  or  literary  friends  is  very  large. 
There  are  few  prominent  Boston  names  of  his  century 
that  are  not  beaded  somewhere  upon  his  verse,  and  his 
tributes  to  them  have  often  been  noble  words.  With  the 
great  occasions  of  the  city,  the  days  of  the  entertainment 
of  distinguished  guests,  he  had  been  as  constantly  as- 
sociated. Few  foreigners  of  note  were  then  in  Boston 
without  taking  his  hand.  In  the  social  and  intellectual 
life  of  the  city  he  held  for  fifty  years  a  leading  place,  and 
made  his  memory  long  in  local  annals.  He  had  indeed 
extended  a  local  reputation  over  a  continent;  but  in  be- 
coming famous  he  did  not  cease  to  be  local.  It  was  as 
a  Bostonian  that  he  was  known.  His  attachment  to  the 
city  was  great  enough  to  keep  him  there  for  the  half-cen- 
tury between  his  student  days  and  his  old  age;  and  his 
flattering  literary  and  social  reception  in  England,  late 
in  life,  did  not  tempt  him  to  recross  the  Atlantic  in  quest 
of  fresh  honors.  It  is  not  without  reason,  therefore,  that 
his  city  has  been  so  faithful  to  him.  Among  the  group  of 
literary  men  with  whom  he  associated  there  are  names 
destined  to  a  longer  brilliancy,  and  their  works  have  been 
of  larger  measure;  but  among  them  there  is  none  who  in 
life  was  the  source  of  more  pleasure  to  the  social  gather- 
ings of  college  and  city,  or  used  his  talents  with  more 
faithfulness,  making  them  serviceable  within  their  range. 
He  belongs  to  old  Boston  now — an  historical  period  of 
the  city  that  cannot  be  recalled  without  his  name. 


LOWELL'S  ADDRESSES 

r 

I 

AN  essay  is  the  freest,  an  address  one  of  the  most  en- 
slaving, forms  of  literary  expression.  The  speaker  is 
subject  to  the  moment,  with  all  that  appanage  of  accident 
and  circumstance  which  has  so  commanding  an  influence 
in  determining  what  words  are  fit  then  and  there;  and, 
although  an  orator  gains  often  from  the  concentration  of 
life  in  a  memorable  hour  and  makes  it  the  very  stuff  of 
his  triumph,  the  man  of  letters  seldom  finds  any  compen- 
sation of  this  sort  possible  to  him.  Such  considerations 
prepare  one  for  what  seems  a  lack  of  customary  freedom 
in  some  of  the  occasional  speeches  of  Mr.  Lowell,  and  for 
a  novel  attitude  of  the  author,  which  may  be  expressed 
by  saying  that  he  does  not  talk  with  you,  as  he  was  wont 
to  do,  but  at  you.  Tact  is  an  admirable  quality,  and 
when  one  must  observe  so  many  and  various  amenities 
as  a  foreign  minister  who  enters  into  the  intellectual  and 
social  life  of  a  great  nation,  it  is  of  incalculable  utility; 
but  the  necessity  to  employ  it  is  an  inconvenience  to  the 
thinker. 

In  the  address  which  Lowell  made  before  the  Words- 
worth Society,  for  example,  his  position  as  the  retiring 
president  was  evidently  an  embarrassment  to  him  as  a 
critic,  and  the  windings  he  makes,  not,  like  Burke,  into 
his  subject,  but  out  of  it,  are  a  lesson  how  to  tell  the  truth 
without  making  a  martyr  of  one's  self,  which  the  most 
skilled  master  of  literary  fence  might  lay  to  heart.  In 

303 


3o4  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

the  Harvard  address,  on  the  contrary,  the  constraint  of 
the  hour  was  evidenced  by  the  complete  liberty  of  speech 
which  he  sensibly  accorded  to  himself :  as  one  in  the  house 
of  his  friends,  he  magnanimously  determined  to  say  his 
say,  irrespective  of  who  might  be  critical,  sure  of  amiable 
tolerance  if  not  of  cordial  agreement.  But  in  an  essay 
he  would  not  have  apologized  for  plain-speaking.  The 
moral  is  this:  that  however  successful  these  addresses 
were,  and  however  delightful  in  themselves,  let  us  not  be 
flattered  into  believing  that  the  man  of  letters  can  be  so 
admirable  as  a  speaker  as  he  is  as  a  writer,  or  is  ever  in 
so  favorable  an  element  as  when  he  is  composing  a  book 
for  the  fit  audience,  though  few,  which  is  impanelled  si- 
lently year  after  year. 

This  warning  springs  from  a  natural  jealousy  for 
Lowell's  literary  fame.  The  address,  nevertheless,  has 
proved  a  fruitful  form  of  expression  for  his  later  thought. 
One  would  not  say  that  he  was  in  earlier  writings  char- 
acteristically discursive,  but  the  extraordinary  fullness  of 
his  mind  and  the  restless  spontaneity  of  its  action  make 
him  seem  so.  This  copiousness  was  always  his,  and  age 
has  brought  a  mellower  ripeness  and  more  of  charm.  For 
a  man  whose  mental  wealth  is  so  constituted,  and  who 
yet  has  never  shown  a  disposition  to  reduce  and  sys- 
tematize thought,  any  literary  form  which  takes  the  sur- 
plusage of  the  mind  and  holds  it,  is  sure  to  be  serviceable. 
These  various  addresses  are  less  a  reasoned  criticism  of 
books  or  life  or  institutions  than  the  overflow  of  an  opu- 
lent mind.  The  old  knowledge  how  to  quote  still  stands 
him  in  good  stead,  as  when  he  repels  Carlyle's  sneer  that 
"America  meant  only  roast  turkey  every  day  for  every- 
body" by  the  home-thrust,  "he  forgot  that  states,  as  Ba- 
con said  of  wars,  go  on  their  bellies."  The  poetic  touch, 


LOWELL'S   ADDRESSES  305 

too,  is  as  swift  and  tender  as  ever,  as  in  the  line  concern- 
ing the  ancient  quiet  of  Oxford,  that  "the  very  stones 
seemed  happier  for  being  there,"  and  in  the  dozen  other 
perfect  sentences  which,  like 

" captain  jewels  in  the  carcanet," 

are  "thinly  placed"  in  the  Harvard  address,  and  of  which 
the  tribute  to  Theocritus  is  one  that  shines  in  the  memory. 
But  to  point  out  such  matters  as  these  is  superfluous,  in 
the  same  way  as  to  review  what  is  said  of  Fielding  or 
Cervantes.  It  is  of  interest,  however,  to  inquire  what  is 
the  general  temper  of  mind  in  these  addresses — what 
things  Lowell  has  finally  found  to  be  of  most  worth  in 
literature  and  in  life. 

In  the  first  rank  stands  the  query,  What  does  Lowell 
think  of  America?  Those  who  listened  to  him  at  Birming- 
ham, when  he  spoke  on  "Democracy,"  heard  him  more 
simply  as  an  American  than  his  auditors  here  can  do:  he 
was  a  Minister  standing  for  the  institutions  of  his  coun- 
try in  their  eyes,  and  justifying  them  in  a  speech  pe- 
culiarly difficult  to  make  because  his  topic  was  all  but  a 
political  issue  in  the  practical  sphere.  Here  the  case  was 
different,  and  public  curiosity  was  alive  to  his  words 
rather  because  he  was  the  most  eminent  representative  of 
that  group  of  cultivated  men  who  are  commonly  believed, 
and  not  without  grounds,  to  distrust  democratic  institu- 
tions and  to  look  askance  upon  the  power  of  the  masses. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Lowell  had  faith  in  our  na- 
tional destiny,  as  perfect  as  was  ever  possessed  by  a 
patriot  aware  of  dangers,  yet  supremely  confident  of  mas- 
tery over  them.  The  basis  of  this  belief  is  nowhere  made 
apparent  in  the  addresses  as  it  lies  deep  in  those  founda- 
tions of  reverence,  of  trust  in  divine  purpose,  of  patriotic 


3o6  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

and  humanitarian  sentiment,  of  emotions  strongly  stirred 
in  the  war  time — in  a  word,  it  lies,  where  alone  all  faith 
is  justified,  in  character.    The  address  on  "Democracy" 
does  not  help  one  much  who  seeks  the  why  of  the  orator's 
conviction,  though  it  illustrates  the  course  of  his  thought 
when  it  is  exercised  upon  the  subject  of  popular  govern- 
ment in  general.    It  is  not  a  profound  and  full  exposi- 
tion of  the  democratic  principle.    It  has  rather  the  con- 
secutiveness  of  life  than  the  sequence  of  logic,  as  indeed 
Lowell  himself  conceived  it,  when  he  announced  his  pur- 
pose to  speak  from  "some  experimental  knowledge  de- 
rived from  the  use  of  such  eyes  and  ears  as  Nature  had 
been  pleased  to  endow  me  with."  He  told  his  Birmingham 
hearers  what  he  had  observed  in  the  working  of  his  home 
institutions,  spoke  of  Lincoln  and  Emerson,  who  each 
bore  authentically  the  mold  of  the  democratic  spirit,  and 
other  things  of  note;  and  he  drove  home  this  report  of 
things  known  to  him  from  experience  by  many  weighty 
maxims  drawn  from  the  higher  region  of  philosophy,  or 
thought  applied  to  the  general  conditions  of  human  life. 
The  sanity  of  his  remarks  is  the  most  striking  of  their 
qualities;  they  are  altogether  free  from  panic,  a  liability 
to  which  is  the  political  weakness  of  culture,  and  they 
thus  keep  proportion  marvelously.    It  is  with  a  brief  and 
almost  careless  stroke  that  he  brushes  aside  a  whole  host 
of  confusion  when  he  says:  "The  last  thing  we  need  be 
anxious  about  is  property."    In  meeting  the  objection  that 
to  arrive  at  truth  by  a  count  of  hands  is  a  transparent 
absurdity,  there  is  something  like  humor  in  his  admission 
of  it,  while  at  the  same  time  he  points  out  that  in  politics 
it  is  not  truth  that  is  to  be  arrived  at,  but  a  working  ar- 
rangement; and  the  count  of  hands  which  now  prevails 
as  a  method  of  decision  is  rightly  contrasted,  not  with 


LOWELL'S   ADDRESSES  307 

the  balance  of  wisdom  in  that  never-existing  republic 
where  philosophers  are  kings,  but  with  the  historic 
methods  of  count  of  pikes,  count  of  stars  and  garters, 
count  of  dollars.  The  way  in  which  the  speculative  in- 
tellect, in  dealing  with  questions  of  suffrage  and  civil 
equality,  misses  the  point,  through  a  lack  of  the  political 
habit  of  mind,  was  never  more  cheerfully  exposed.  The 
maxim  that  it  is  not  the  Rights,  but  the  Wrongs  of  men 
that  make  all  the  trouble,  is  phrased  and  rephrased  as 
one  shapes  glowing  metal  with  strokes  of  the  hammer; 
and  no  part  of  the  rational  groundwork  of  democracy  is 
slighted. 

It  is  not  in  these  matters,  which  belong  to  the  past  of 
accomplished  fact  with  us,  that  the  most  interesting  part 
of  the  political  spirit  of  Lowell  lies,  for  Americans;  but 
in  those  sentences  which  look  to  the  future,  which  deal 
with  wealth  and  poverty,  with  the  means  of  satisfying 
desires  which  democracy  has  created,  with  the  possibility 
of  modifying  those  conditions  which  are  the  source  of 
suffering  and  injustice  to  the  common  people,  and  like 
themes.  He  knows  the  large  proportion  of  woe  and  want 
that  springs  from  human  nature,  and  is  irremediable  ex- 
cept by  the  regeneration  of  the  individual,  but  he  thinks 
that  something  of  the  burden  on  the  lower  orders  of  man- 
kind is  due  to  defective  social  arrangements.  He  is  quite 
sensible  of  the  place  of  wealth  in  sustaining  society,  of 
its  beneficence,  and  of  the  increase  of  conscience  in  its 
holders;  but  he  says  sharply  that  wealth  bears  those 
burdens  "which  can  most  easily  be  borne,  but  poverty 
pays  with  its  person  the  chief  expenses  of  war,  pestilence, 
and  famine,"  and  adds  that  all  the  vast  charity  of  well- 
meaning  and  laborious  philanthropists  in  the  expenditure 
of  money  is  no  more  than  "as  if  we  should  apply  plasters 


3o8  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

to  a  single  pustule  of  the  smallpox  with  a  view  of  driving 
out  the  disease."  The  bearing  of  this  view  of  the  relative 
positions  of  wealth  and  poverty  under  conditions  which 
admit  of  change,  is  too  wide-reaching  to  be  followed  out 
here.  The  whole  course  of  thought  seems  to  come  to  its 
head  in  his  remarks  upon  Henry  George,  whose  political 
economy  he  parries  with  a  witticism,  but  affirms  that  he 
"is  right  in  his  impelling  motives";  and,  not  fearful  of 
words,  he  continues,  with  a  disclaimer  of  communism  on 
the  one  hand  and  of  State  socialism  on  the  other,  "but 
socialism  means,  or  wishes  to  mean,  cooperation  and  com- 
munity of  interests,  sympathy,  the  giving  to  the  hands 
not  so  large  a  share  as  to  the  brains,  but  a  larger  share 
than  hitherto  in  the  wealth  they  must  combine  to  pro- 
duce— means,  in  short,  the  practical  application  of  Chris- 
tianity to  life,  and  has  in  it  the  secret  of  an  orderly 
and  benign  reconstruction." 

The  second  point  which  is  to  be  reckoned  lies  in  the 
literary  field.  It  is  no  news  to  say  that  Mr.  Lowell  is  an 
idealist.  It  is,  nevertheless,  worth  emphasizing;  partly 
because  he  is  the  fittest  to  be  called  as  a  witness  of  any 
public  man,  and  partly  because  he  himself  emphasizes  the 
fact  strenuously.  There  is  no  form  of  the  older  criticism 
that  he  does  not  use  to  give  wings  or  weight,  as  the  case 
may  be,  to  his  words.  He  draws  the  distinction  as 
markedly  now  as  in  years  gone  by  between  the  imagina- 
tion and  the  understanding,  and  classifies  authors  as  in 
one  or  the  other  realm.  He  believes  as  unreservedly  as 
ever  in  the  higher  worth  of  the  imagination,  and  in  its 
higher  function.  Coleridge,  he  says,  taught  the  English 
mind  "to  recognize  in  the  imagination  an  important  factor 
not  only  in  the  happiness  but  in  the  destiny  of  man"; 
and  he  does  but  develop  Coleridge  and  those  who  fed  the 


LOWELL'S   ADDRESSES  309 

mind  of  Coleridge  originally,  when  he  says  elsewhere, 
"The  most  vivid  sensations  of  which  our  moral  and  in- 
tellectual nature  is  capable  are  received  through  the 
imagination,"  or,  "We  hold  all  the  deepest,  all  the  highest 
satisfactions  of  life  as  tenants  of  the  imagination."  He 
is  careful,  too,  to  remind  us  that  when  imagination  allies 
itself  "as  best  it  may"  with  the  understanding,  only  lower 
ends  are  possible  to  it.  Again,  he  defines  the  world  of  the 
imagination  as  '"not  the  world  of  abstraction  and 
nonentity,  as  some  conceive,  but  a  world  formed  out  of 
chaos  by  a  sense  of  the  beauty  that  is  in  man  and  the 
earth  on  which  he  dwells."  He  elucidates  the  subject 
further  by  repeating  once  more  the  old  idea  that  the 
imagination  deals  with  the  type.  Thus,  of  Cervantes's 
characters:  "They  are  not  so  much  taken  from  life  as 
informed  with  it;  ...  not  the  matter-of-fact  work  of 
a  detective's  watchfulness,  products  of  a  quick  eye  and 
a  faithful  memory,  but  the  true  children  of  the  imagina- 
tive faculty,  from  which  all  the  dregs  of  observation  and 
memory  have  been  distilled  away,  leaving  only  what  is 
elementary  and  universal."  And  if  the  reader  has  pa- 
tience for  another  quotation,  the  character  of  pure  litera- 
ture— of  that  cast,  as  he  would  say,  in  the  forma  mentis 
eterna — was  never  more  nobly  and  exactly  described  than 
where  he  writes  of  its  works  as  "those  in  which  intellect, 
infused  with  the  sense  of  beauty,  aims  rather  to  produce 
delight  than  conviction,  or,  if  conviction,  then  through 
intuition  rather  than  formal  logic,  and  leaving  what 
Donne  wisely  calls 

'Unconcerning  things  matter  of  fact' 

to  science  and  the  understanding,  seeks  to  give  ideal  ex- 
pression to  those  abiding  realities  of  the  spiritual  world 


3io  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

for  which  the  outward  and  visible  world  serves  at  best 
but  as  the  husk  and  symbol."  In  that  sentence  lies  the 
whole  organon  of  the  higher  criticism.  If  one  masters  it, 
he  is  a  graduate  of  literary  art,  and  there  is  no  depart- 
ment of  the  works  of  creative  genius  to  which  he  does  not 
hold  the  key  of  interpretation.  But  a  view  of  the  art  of 
literature  which  is  so  pronounced  and  so  frankly  set  forth 
by  the  only  critic  of  the  highest  rank  that  our  country  has 
ever  produced,  does  not  call  for  more  than  statement; 
one  need  only  note  the  principles  of  his  criticism,  and 
dwell  on  the  prominence  he  gives  to  the  imagination,  on 
his  old-fashioned  adherence  to  the  doctrine  that  the  type 
is  the  only  thing  real  in  an  exact  sense,  and  that  art  con- 
sists in  identifying  the  individual  with  the  type,  which  is 
the  peculiar  faculty  of  genius — its  creativeness. 

These  are  the  two  most  noticeable  traits  of  the  ripened 
convictions  of  Lowell  as  made  known  in  this  volume 
— the  democratic  and  the  idealistic  temper  in  forms  of 
extraordinary  purity.  It  is  evident  that  he  believed  in  the 
gods  who  had  fashioned  his  own  clay,  and  he  wished 
their  power  to  continue  over  new  generations,  because  he 
had  experienced  its  enlightening  and  civilizing  influence 
in  his  own  life-long  culture.  At  the  Harvard  Commem- 
oration he  was  defending  his  own  masters  who  had 
brought  him  to  such  happy  issues  of  thought,  and  plead- 
ing that  the  nurture  of  our  youth  be  still  intrusted  to 
those  humane  studies  which  were  the  fecundating  intel- 
lectual principle  of  modern  civilization.  It  was  natural  for 
him,  it  was  well-nigh  a  filial  duty,  to  take  this  view.  But 
have  not  four  centuries  of  compulsory  classical  study  in 
our  institutions  of  learning  incorporated  the  immortal 
part  of  the  ancient  culture  in  our  general  intellectual  life 
as  closely  as  the  Judean  religious  impulse  has  entered 


LOWELL'S   ADDRESSES  311 

into  our  common  spiritual  life,  so  that  special  training  in 
the  Latin  and  Greek  may  safely  be  left  to  the  literary 
class  as  Hebrew  to  the  clerical  class?  Plutarch  is  an  in- 
spiring author  for  the  young  and  strengthening  to  the 
mature;  but  that  American  whom  Lowell  singled  out 
as  "one  of  Plutarch's  men,"  and  who  alone  of  our  country- 
men could  support  that  simple  and  heroic  phrase,  was  not 
indebted  to  "insolent  Greece  or  haughty  Rome"  for  one 
tittle  of  his  personal  greatness.  Was  that  very  one  whose 
literary  fame  braved  the  classical  tradition  in  that  auda- 
cious line  of  Jonson's  eulogy — was  Shakespeare  so  deeply 
obliged,  in  any  direct  way,  to  antiquity  by  virtue  of  his 
"small  Latin  and  less  Greek"?  And  as  a  sign  of  how 
wide  the  stream  of  Virgil's  speech  has  spread  abroad,  it 
may  be  mentioned  that  Lowell  quotes  often  from 
Dante,  but  neglects  Dante's  master.  Has  not  the  work 
of  the  Renaissance  been  accomplished?  Our  culture  is  so 
permeated  with  the  old  wisdom,  so  articulated  with  clas- 
sical canons,  so  informed  with  rationality  that  the  new 
birth  of  learning  may  be  regarded  as  complete;  one  draws 
on  the  ancient  fountain-head  whenever  he  taps  a  modern 
literature,  and  thereby  the  necessity  of  an  original  ac- 
quaintance with  the  classics  for  every  man  who  aspires  to 
be  liberally  educated,  is  greatly  lessened  if  not  destroyed. 
For  the  very  few  who  may  hope  to  reach  any  distinction 
in  refinement,  leaders  in  culture,  the  men  of  letters  and 
of  art,  interested  mainly  only  in  the  best  things  produced 
by  the  spirit  of  man,  the  training  by  which  Lowell 
had  been  molded  will  still  be  needful;  it  is  got,  not  in 
colleges,  but  in  the  private  study.  Professors  cannot  give 
it,  for  it  is  self-imposed,  and,  after  all,  it  is  less  a  disci- 
pline than  an  inner  growth.  In  what  worth  of  substance 
it  results,  in  what  attractive  charm  of  manner,  in  what 


3i2  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

universal  efficacy  of  thought,  these  addresses  illustrate, 
by  the  impression  they  make  of  both  the  quality  and  vol- 
ume of  the  settled  and  habitual  wisdom  of  which  they  are 
so  partial  and  fragmentary  a  record.  They  are  a  better 
defense  of  the  rights  of  humane  study  than  any  advocate 
could  frame.  The  best  moral  is  implicit  in  things,  not 
explicit  in  words;  and  in  this  volume  there  is  the  authen- 
tic impress  of  the  classical  spirit — age  seasons  every  page, 
and  yet  every  page  is  young. 


II 

The  country  may  justly  take  pride  in  the  temper  and 
quality  of  these  speeches,  which  display  national  as  well 
as  personal  excellences,  and  will  be  the  lasting  record  of 
Lowell's  life  abroad,  as  a  representative  American.  But 
more  than  the  variety  of  theme  and  circumstance  in  the 
contents  of  this  volume,  its  unity  of  spirit,  its  single- 
mindedness,  are  forced  upon  the  reader's  attention:  not 
that  it  is  characterized  by  sameness  of  idea,  —  on  the 
contrary,  it  is  perpetually  changeful  in  thought,  —  or  by 
any  scheme  or  system  which  of  itself  organizes  a  man's 
knowledge  always  in  the  same  general  lines,  and  is  thus 
the  source  of  a  merely  formal  and  specious  coherency; 
nor  that  it  has  any  one  end  in  view,  any  defined  purpose, 
or  recurring  moral,  or  proselytizing  tendency,  even;  but 
in  it  one  perceives  everywhere  the  presence  of  culture 
transmuted  into  character,  knowledge  that  has  suffered 
the  immortalizing  change  into  wisdom,  judgments  that 
share  in  the  permanency  of  things  because  derived  from 
long-established  traditions  and  the  whole  intellectual  and 
social  habit  of  the  race,  —  in  brief,  one  sees  the  same 


LOWELL'S   ADDRESSES  313 

mind  in  it  all,  completely  developed,  consistent,  and  forti- 
fied in  its  principles. 

This  mind  is  preeminently  that  of  a  man  of  letters. 
Literature,  in  the  exact  sense,  has  been  its  nutriment. 
The  largest  part  of  what  Mr.  Lowell  has  to  say,  too,  per- 
tains to  literature.  It  is  true  that  the  greater  portion  is 
strictly  criticism,  though  somewhat  affected  in  its  form 
and  bearing  by  the  circumstance  that  it  was  spoken,  and 
must  be  read  by  the  ear  as  well  as  by  the  eye;  but  it  is 
more  than  criticism,  as  generally  understood,  because  the 
decisions  do  not  apply  merely  to  the  special  author  in 
hand,  but  have  a  wider  relation  to  authorship  itself;  not  to 
books  alone,  but  also  to  the  spiritual  life  which  it  is  the 
office  of  books  to  quicken,  strengthen,  and  perfect. 
Lowell  may  be  writing  of  some  individual,  and  have  only 
him  in  mind;  but  it  frequently  happens  that  a  slightly 
accented  sentence,  what  seems  perhaps  a  simple  remark 
by  the  way,  is  a  text  for  a  long  sermon,  if  the  reader  will 
follow  out  its  suggestions.  Sometimes  Lowell's  suppres- 
sion of  this  implicit  homily  appears  to  be  against  his 
will.  He,  as  a  man  of  letters,  necessarily  places  a  high 
value  upon  literary  form;  wisdom  by  itself  is  less  prized 
apart  —  to  use  his  own  phrase  —  from  "the  beauty  in 
which  it  is  incarnated";  and  for  a  poet  to  fail  of  this  in- 
carnating beauty,  he  is  well  assured,  is  a  defect  in  the 
very  substance  and  tissue  of  genius.  With  the  growth 
of  popular  education,  there  has  lately  come  an  effort  to 
make  analysis  do  the  work  of  intuition  in  the  study  of 
literature;  because  the  eye  cannot  see  what  the  poet  has 
embodied,  it  is  fancied  that  the  dissecting  hand  can  make 
the  soul  apparent;  but  what  is  thus  arrived  at  is  truth, 
in  its  philosophical,  not  its  poetic  form.  The  method  has 
its  advantages,  no  doubt,  and  one  would  not  depreciate 


3 14  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

its  worth;  in  particular,  it  is  a  great  boon  to  poets  who 
in  considerable  portions  of  their  work  have  not  expressed 
the  truth  with  such  perfection  that  it  can  be  perceived  at 
first  sight;  that  is,  to  poets  who  have  failed,  at  times,  in 
that  "incarnating  beauty"  which  belongs  to  the  ever- 
living  works  of  genius.  Students  of  Wordsworth  know 
very  well  that  he  is  often  sensible  when  he  is  not  poetic, 
but  his  devotees  are  slow  to  recognize  and  acknowledge 
the  fact  that  at  such  times  his  poems  have  not  the  prin- 
ciple of  life  in  them  which  makes  real  literature  survive, 
and  constitutes  its  reality.  To  think  all  of  Wordsworth, 
or  any  very  large  proportion  of  his  literary  remains,  to  be 
literature  is  to  confuse  the  mind's  sense  of  relative  values; 
to  set  up  a  standard  of  meaning  in  place  of  the  old  stan- 
dard of  style  is  to  abolish  the  distinction  of  prose  and 
verse,  of  philosophy  and  poetry;  and  to  substitute  for 
the  creative  artist  that  merely  percipient  creature  who 
is  called  the  Seer.  Lowell  made  many  a  downright  stroke, 
in  his  address  to  the  Wordsworth  Society,  which  must 
have  seemed  to  the  poet's  more  devout  worshipers  as 
if  their  idol  were  having  his  hands  and  feet  lopped  off; 
but  the  most  significant  word,  the  unkindest  cut  of  all, 
when  one  sees  how  deep  it  sinks  into  the  marrow,  is  a 
hardly  noticeable  sentence  slipping  gravely  in  at  the  end 
of  a  paragraph:  "There  are  various  methods  of  criticism; 
but  I  think  we  should  all  agree  that  literary  work  is  to 
be  judged  from  the  purely  literary  point  of  view."  Who 
would  not  assent  to  so  obvious  a  truism?  But  what  be- 
comes of  Wordsworthians  in  general,  what  becomes  of 
the  modern  sect  of  the  Browningites,  if  literary  work  is 
"to  be  judged  from  the  purely  literary  point  of  view"?  It 
is  to  escape  from  the  literary  point  of  view  and  its  limi- 
tations that  meaning  is  made  the  test  of  value,  indepen- 


LOWELL'S  ADDRESSES  315 

dent  of  style,  and  the  gown  of  the  scholar  usurps  the 
honors  due  alone  to  the  poet's  laurel.  It  is  well  to  be 
understood;  the  now  popular  method  of  study  may  feed 
the  mind,  may  open  the  inner  truth  of  the  author  and 
multiply  its  usefulness  as  thought,  and  no  doubt  does  this 
excellent  service;  but  shall  the  foolish  therefore  imagine 
that  lucid  expression  is  not  elemental  in  the  work  of 
genius,  or  that  any  poetry  which  lacks  it  is  of  enduring 
power?  A  man  of  letters  is  naturally  impatient  of  the 
intrusion  of  foreign  standards  upon  the  domain  of  litera- 
ture, and  must  at  least  "hesitate"  his  dissent,  as  Lowell 
has  here  done. 

There  is  a  good  deal  in  these  addresses,  as  a  whole, 
which  must  be  classed  as  dissent;  for  in  many  respects 
Lowell  stands  against  a  rising  tide.  Is  it  to  be  inferred 
that  he  represents  the  times  that  were,  in  literary  criti- 
cism and  in  his  conviction  of  what  nurture  is  best  for  the 
souls  of  men?  Certainly  it  is  to  be  feared  that  Coleridge, 
to  whose  spiritualizing  influence  he  regards  the  English 
mind  as  much  indebted,  is  little  read,  less  consulted,  and 
perhaps  scarcely  understood  by  those  who  rule  the  hour 
among  us.  It  would  not  be  venturing  much  to  intimate 
that  younger  men  will  learn  more  of  the  great  critical 
authority  of  their  fathers  from  this  speech,  on  unveiling 
his  bust  in  the  Abbey,  than  they  ever  knew  from  Cole- 
ridge's own  works.  The  trend  of  our  time  is  toward  the 
lowlands  of  the  understanding,  so  Lowell  seems  to  think; 
is  toward  the  region  of  observation  and  record,  toward 
the  science  of  what  the  senses  report,  and  that  portraiture 
of  the  material  which  is  comprehensively  termed  realism. 
To  dwell  on  the  merits  of  Coleridge,  to  expound  the 
methods  of  Cervantes  in  creation,  or,  nearer  at  hand,  to 
point  to  Fielding's  way,  is  to  prefer  the  Old  Comedy  to 


3i6  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

the  New,  in  our  Athens.  Some  one  may  irreverently  sug- 
gest that,  though  Coleridge  no  doubt  did  a  good  turn  in 
importing  Germany,  it  is  Russia  that  we  need  now;  and 
Cervantes,  —  was  he  not  a  romantic  writer,  perhaps?  As 
for  Fielding,  why,  he  lived  long  before  Thackeray  and 
Dickens,  even!  Irreverence  might  go  so  far,  for  what 
head  among  us  but  quails  beneath  the  truncheon  of 
realism?  Yet  when  he  was  over-seas  Lowell  told  the 
workingmen  to  whom  he  read  his  notes  on  "Don  Quixote" 
that  when  he  entered  the  company  of  the  realistic  school 
he  felt  "set  to  grind  in  the  prison-house  of  the  Philistines. 
I  walk  about  in  a  nightmare,  the  supreme  horror  of  which 
is  that  my  coat  is  all  button-holed  for  bores  to  thrust  their 
fingers  through,  and  bait  me  to  my  heart's  content."  And 
he  goes  on  to  speak  of  ancient  worthies,  like  that  im- 
possible Hector,  and  Roland  with  his  ridiculous  horn, 
and  Macbeth  in  the  old  witch-story,  and  others  of  the 
same  kind  of  beings,  who  "move  about,  if  not  in  worlds 
not  realized,  at  least  in  worlds  not  realized  to  any  eye  but 
that  of  imagination,  a  world  far  from  police  reports,  a 
world  into  which  it  is  a  privilege,  I  might  almost  say  an 
achievement,  to  enter."  Our  irreverent  critic  will,  per- 
haps, not  dispute  the  alleged  habitat  of  these  romantic 
heroes,  but  as  to  the  privilege  and  achievement  of  enter- 
ing there  he  will  be  more  skeptical.  Lowell  belongs 
to  the  idealists,  and  it  is  too  much  to  expect  that  he  should 
take  a  more  modern  view;  he  has  been  so  shaped  and 
inspired  by  the  old  culture  that  he  is  loyal  to  it  as  to  the 
blood  and  spirit  of  the  fathers;  and  the  old  culture  is, 
beyond  gainsaying,  idealistic,  from  Homer  and  David 
down  to  the  birth  of  Zola.  It  could  scarcely  be  hoped 
that  a  man  to  whom  literature  as  it  has  been  is  the  breath 
of  his  spiritual  being  should  revoke  old-time  judgments, 


LOWELL'S   ADDRESSES  317 

and  decree  anew  in  favor  of  literature  as  we  make  it. 
Such  charitable  consideration  will  be  allowed  to  a  veteran 
of  criticism,  no  doubt,  by  the  most  modern  school;  but 
he  can  hardly  look  for  more  than  tolerance.  Is  it,  then, 
so  true  that  to  get  away  from  our  neighbors  we  must  seek 
Plutarch?  Can  one  not  converse  with  the  spirit  except 
in  Dante?  And  after  all,  would  it  be  so  very  much  wiser 
to  stay  with  our  neighbors,  and  disbelieve  in  heroes  of  an 
older  type;  to  deny  the  spirit,  and  give  our  days  and 
nights  to  the  jargon  of  French  fish-wives  and  the  slang  of 
the  American  street?  Lowell  observes,  "We  are  apt  to 
wonder  at  the  scholarship  of  the  men  of  three  centuries 
ago,  and  at  a  certain  dignity  of  phrase  that  characterizes 
them.  They  were  scholars, -because  they  did  not  read  so 
many  things  as  we.  They  had  fewer  books,  but  these 
were  of  the  best.  Their  speech  was  noble,  because  they 
lunched  with  Plutarch  and  supped  with  Plato."  There  is 
"a  certain  dignity  of  phrase"  that  characterizes  this  vol- 
ume also,  such  as  has  not  been  noticeable  in  any  American 
book  for  a  long  time.  Is  not  the  reason,  in  its  degree, 
the  same,  and  may  it  not  be  that  the  old  culture  is  still 
justified  of  her  children?  Three  centuries  hence,  if  any 
should  care  to  examine  the  literature  of  this  decade,  will 
they  not  explain  Lowell's  preeminence,  in  weight,  close- 
ness, and  beauty  of  phrase  in  somewhat  the  same  way? 
If  this  should  prove  so,  the  realists  may  well  ponder  that 
admirable  quotation  which  is  so  forcibly  flung  down  be- 
fore the  feet  of  those  who  forget  "the  warning  of  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh,  perhaps  more  important  to  the  artist 
than  to  the  historian,  that  it  is  dangerous  to  follow  truth 
too  near  the  heels."  As  a  matter  of  minor  criticism,  there 
is  a  passing  remark  upon  Spanish  literature:  speaking  of 
the  "flavor  of  the  soil,"  he  says,  "It  has  the  advantage  of 


3i8  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

giving  even  to  second-class  writers  in  a  foreign  language 
that  strangeness  which  in  our  own  tongue  is  possible  only 
to  originality  either  of  thought  or  style."  Does  not  this 
indicate  the  mistake  of  perspective  that  is  made  by  those 
who  are  loud  in  the  praise  of  foreign  books? 

Dissents  of  other  kinds  are  to  be  found  in  these  pages. 
It  is  not  a  bird-bolt  shot  into  the  air,  when  the  critic  of 
Fielding  turns  upon  those  who  find  that  author  intolerably 
gross  with  the  rejoinder  that  "the  second  of  the  seven 
deadly  sins  is  not  less  dangerous  when  she  talks  mysti- 
cism, and  ogles  us  through  the  gaps  of  a  fan  painted  with 
the  story  of  the  virgin  martyr."  This  sentence  lays  bare 
the  most  offensive  weakness  of  the  esthetic  school.  It 
would  be  ungracious  to  dwell  only  upon  the  points  of  dis- 
agreement which  the  author  reveals  between  his  percep- 
tion of  what  is  and  his  judgment  of  what  ought  to  be. 
How  many  and  various  they  are  may  be  known  from  the 
examples  which  have  been  cited;  but  were  they  much 
more  numerous,  and  the  rifts  of  severance  as  wide  as  they 
are  profound,  —  which  is  by  no  means  the  case,  —  the 
author  would  remain  an  optimist;  in  the  midst  of  his 
most  destructive  critical  reservations  he  would  seem  only 
a  wiser,  not  a  less  sincere  and  reverential,  worshiper;  in 
the  full  flow  of  his  protest,  whether  against  realism,  or 
the  new  education,  or  what  not,  he  would  interpose  a 
compliment  of  Spanish  largeness,  and  confirm  his  audi- 
ence in  their  conviction  of  the  general  cheerfulness  of  the 
outlook.  If  Lowell  does  not  readily  acquiesce  with  all 
the  powers  that  be,  he  believes  in  those  that  are  to  be. 
He  will  not  despair  of  the  republic  of  letters,  or  that  of 
democracy  either.  To  his  view  there  are  apparently 
darker  clouds  in  the  literary  than  in  the  political  horizon; 
but,  however  that  may  turn  out,  he  is  certainly  more  in 


LOWELL'S   ADDRESSES  319 

harmony  with  current  thought  in  what  he  has  to  say  of 
our  institutions  and  society,  of  the  national  experience  of 
democracy,  and  of  the  progressive  and  humanizing  ele- 
ments in  our  social  theory  than  he  is  in  his  discussions  of 
education  or  of  the  laws  of  literary  art.  If  his  dissents 
in  the  one  division  are  instructive,  no  less  are  his  assents 
in  the  other.  He  could  not  profess  more  explicitly  ad- 
herence to  the  democratic  principle  as  the  basis  of  a 
greater  and  more  equal  public  welfare  in  the  state  than 
any  nation  has  hitherto  known,  as  the  promise  of  a  pros- 
perity to  be  still  more  widely  distributed  among  the 
common  people,  and  as  a  means  of  regeneration  in  the  life 
of  the  poor.  He  more  than  adheres  to  the  political  faith 
in  which  the  nation  is  built,  —  his  acceptance  of  it  goes 
to  the  point  of  advocacy. 

The  leading  address  in  this  volume,  that  on  democracy, 
is  the  work  of  an  exceptionally  wise  and  subtle  observer. 
It  does  not  take  pains  to  sustain  democracy  upon  the 
ground  of  its  foundations  in  equity,  in  utility,  and  the 
manifest  destiny  which  history  reveals  to  the  student; 
rather,  it  maintains  the  practical  working  of  it  against 
objections  which  are  deeply  lodged  only  in  the  prejudices, 
self-conceit,  and  fears  of  a  cultivated  class,  and  dwells 
upon  its  inevitable  success  and  its  humanitarian  spirit. 
Lowell  is  not  one  of  the  weaklings  of  philanthropy.  He 
had  such  object-lessons  in  mania  before  him  in  his  youth, 
and  the  half-century  in  which  his  life  had  been  thrown 
had  been  so  thick  with  reforms  that  he  was  not  to  be  cap- 
tured by  any  cause  at  this  late  day.  He  refers  more  than 
once  to  those  whose  sympathies  are  so  touched  by  some 
single  case  of  suffering  that  they  fail  to  perceive  the  regu- 
lative law,  to  those  who  cannot  see  the  crime  because  the 
criminal's  person  intervenes,  and  to  other  classes  whose 


320  LITERARY   MEMOIRS 

sensibilities  are  more  developed  than  their  judgments.  He 
himself  sees  with  perfect  clearness  a  definitely  constituted 
world,  whose  conditions  may  be  hard  but  are  fixed,  and 
also  a  something  which  the  theologians  used  to  call  man's 
heart,  the  prolific  source  of  evil,  suffering,  and  pain;  and 
he  is  well  aware  that  all  human  life  goes  on,  as  one  might 
say,  between  these  upper  and  nether  grindstones  of  Na- 
ture and  Human  Nature;  he  does  not  look  for  any  phi- 
lanthropy to  change  this  constitution  of  things.  It  is  a 
welcome  sight  when  one  whose  hold  is  so  firm  on  the  facts 
of  human  existence  nevertheless  suggests  and  apparently 
believes  that  the  organization  of  society  is  subject  to  con- 
siderable human  improvement,  and  not  a  part  of  that 
order  with  which  man  has  nothing  to  do  but  to  submit 
to  it.  The  value  of  such  suggestion  and  belief  depends 
upon  the  kind  of  change  which  the  writer  deems  possible 
and  desirable.  Lowell  does  not  express  himself  very  fully 
upon  the  matter,  but  he  seems  willing  to  follow  the  idea 
of  democracy  into  its  developments  with  that  optimistic 
feeling  which  has  already  been  remarked  upon.  A  care- 
ful reader  will  observe  a  thorough-going  sympathy  with 
the  effort  of  the  poor,  the  humble  and  homely  classes  who 
do  the  physical  work  of  the  world,  to  obtain  a  larger  share 
of  the  fruits  of  the  common  toil;  and  also  he  may  notice 
a  cordial  disposition  of  mind  toward  the  purposes  and 
spirit  at  least  of  some  of  those  who  aim  at  this  result 
through  social  changes.  One  should  not  put  an  undue 
emphasis  upon  his  words,  but  it  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  he  shows  a  mind  open  and  hospitable  to  those  re- 
forms of  the  future  which  democracy  seems  to  carry  in 
itself  as  premises  contain  a  conclusion. 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


